Is Madison Returning To Fear The Walking Dead?

Probably.

At one point I pretty firmly believed that Madison would not return to Fear The Walking Dead. At the time, I wrote:

Don’t believe AMC when it teases a Madison return. They’ve done this with the painted trees. They’ve done with as recently as this past Sunday’s episode, when Alicia decided it’s time to head back to the zombie-infested Stadium where Madison died.

Ahem, where Madison “died.” After all, we never saw her body! She’s only been gone for two seasons. She could come back...right?

Wrong.

Stop listening to people who want you to think that.

Just look at all the headlines we saw before this last episode of Fear. Stuff like “Fear The Walking Dead Finally Brought Back A Missing Character In Midseason Finale” from ComicBook.com and similar headlines from plenty of other sites that want you to think it’s Madison. Because you want it to be Madison.

But it’s clickbait! Or, if not clickbait, headlines like these are certainly designed to make you think Madison is coming back because we didn’t see her body. I should know. I know how headlines work.

Madison is gone.

I hate to break it to you, folks, but she’s gone. Gone like Nick.

Hell, even tonight’s episode is a Madison tease given that it’s titled “Mother” and features an Alicia storyline. My review is titled: ‘Fear The Walking Dead’ Season 6, Episode 14 Review: Another Long-Lost Character Who Isn’t Madison Returns In ‘Mother’

I used to be pretty sure this was all just gimmicky teasing on AMC’s part—just another way for them to wrangle in viewers, dangling the carrot of Madison’s return and watching the fans chase it to nowhere fast.

I’m not so sure anymore. I have three reasons for this.

First, the Madison stuff has become even more relentless lately. They talked about her a lot in this episode and then in the AMC+ behind the scenes feature after they talk about her even more (how Cole “tarnishes” her legacy or some such nonsense). Sure, this could be just more teasing, but I think they might be serious about a Kim Dickens return the more I see of this stuff. After all, they can only dangle that carrot for so long without paying up.

Second, the show’s ratings are not great. The very first episode of Season 1 had 13.96 million viewers with 4.9 million in the 18-49 demo, showing just what an enormous audience there used to be for this franchise. Viewership dropped to around 10 million by the end of Season 1.

It continued to fall during a mixed-bag second season. Season 3—the best of the entire show’s run—stumbled even further, opening with 5.08 million and closing with 3.83. By Season 5 ratings were down to 3.21 million viewers for the premiere, and just 0.6 in the 18-49 demo. The Season 5 finale was down to 2.26 million with just 0.4 in the demo.

Season 6 opened to just 1.59 million viewers with .41 in the demo and its 12th episode was down to under 1 million viewers (.988) with a tiny .25 in the 18-49 demo. That is painful. That is just painful to even type. How do the current showrunners still have jobs?

AMC is almost certainly hoping like hell that Dickens will accept whatever offer they’ve given her so that they can get at least a temporary boost in ratings for Season 7—though the return of a character popular with one segment of the fanbase will not save the show or its ratings. Madison didn’t make the show. The show succeeded—when it succeeded—based off of great character dynamics and solid writing. Even then, during the excellent third season, viewers had largely checked out. They just keep checking out more and more as this show continues to commit the slowest possible suicide: Death by bad writing.

Third reason: Rumors. I have heard rumors. I have heard whispers from little birds. I’m not sure that these rumors can or should be believed but they’re out there and given reasons #1 and #2 I would not be surprised.

I used to think it was totally crazy and that there’s no way Madison would ever come back because I figured there’s no way that Kim Dickens would want the role again after all the crap this show has done both to her character and to all the characters. But I admit now that I may have predicted incorrectly.

I will guarantee you this one thing: if Madison does return, AMC will almost certainly not reveal it in an actual episode. They will spoil the crap out of her return on social media and in various marketing efforts so that they can get as many eyeballs as possible. Who cares about cool narrative twists or surprises when you can just tweet that shit or post it to your insta? Not AMC, that’s for sure! If Rick ever comes back outside the movies (sigh, those stupid movies) they’ll do the exact same thing. Parade that shit across the internet and then light it on fire just to make sure everyone knows well in advance.

Odds of a Madison return have gone from 1:4 to 3:1. We shall see.