‘Fear The Walking Dead’ Season 4 And ‘The Walking Dead’ Season 8: Here’s How The Timelines Will Match Up

The Season 4 premiere of AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead saw a character cross over from The Walking Dead. But, how can that happen? After all, The Walking Dead is four seasons ahead of Fear and that means there is a massive timeline gap between the two shows. However, Morgan (Lennie James) made the transition from the Season 8 finale of The Walking Dead straight into the Season 4 premiere. Here’s how the timeline adds up.

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains information about the Season 4 premiere episode of AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead. Please proceed with caution if you have not already viewed this episode and wish to avoid spoilers.

According to a timeline put together by eagle-eyed fans and summarized by Fansided, since the initial outbreak in The Walking Dead, approximately 619 days have passed. That’s approximately 20.5 months or one year, eight months, and two weeks. Fear the Walking Dead began prior to the initial outbreak, but it is estimated 64 days had passed by the time of the Season 3 finale.

So, based on these assumptions, that means, by the time Morgan meets up with John Dorie (Garret Dillahunt) in the Season 4 premiere of Fear, approximately 555 days have to be accounted for to catch Fear up to the timeline of The Walking Dead.

Right off the bat, when John is monologuing at the beginning of Episode 1, he makes it known that he estimates a year has passed. This means we are now looking at a difference of only approximately 190 days. That’s around six months, which is still a big gap.

Of course, the gap becomes even greater when you realize that Morgan must have spent some time in Jadis’ junkyard prior to walking his way from Virginia to Texas. As Cinema Blend points out, the showrunner for Fear, Scott Gimple, told Chris Hardwick on Talking Dead that Morgan had enough time to grow eggplants before he took off on his great walk. They estimate that the time to grow eggplants could take between four and six months depending on whether Jadis started them off before she left to join Rick’s group or not.

So, now we can assume there is a year’s difference to account for in upcoming episodes of Fear the Walking Dead.

TV Guide has also stated that Season 4 of Fear the Walking Dead will occur over multiple timelines. As they explain, this will help bring all of the storylines up to the timeline of The Walking Dead and will include how the Clarks ended up taking Morgan’s group hostage at the end of the Season 4 premiere episode.

However, fans will have to tune into further episodes to find out just how – and if – all of these timelines will merge cohesively.

Fear the Walking Dead returns to AMC on Sunday, April 22, at 9 p.m. ET. Zap2It lists the following synopsis for Episode 2 (titled “Another Day in the Diamond”).

“A troubled survivor finds allies in an unexpected place; the life Madison has fought to build comes under threat.”