Fear the Walking Dead returns for its fifth season this coming weekend, and with it comes the introduction of a familiar face from the main Walking Dead series as Austin Amelio’s Dwight joins his former cast mate Lennie James (Morgan) on the companion show.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly ahead of the season five premiere, co-showrunner Ian Goldberg has been chatting about Dwight’s introduction, and how the former Savior’s character arc will fit with the overall theme of the season – redemption.
“We love Dwight. We love Austin Amelio. We’re huge fans of his character and his work on The Walking Dead. When we started to talk about bringing Dwight over, it started in the same place for us emotionally as when we were talking last season about Morgan, and that is: Emotionally, what’s the story we’re telling on a bigger scale this season?
“This season is going to be about our characters grappling with the things they’ve done in their past and looking for redemption through the things they’re doing now, and for anyone who knows Dwight’s story on The Walking Dead, he is someone who did a lot of bad things over his time as a Savior. He hurt a lot of people, he did a lot of things he regrets, but he was given a second chance by Daryl at the end of season 8 when Daryl spared his life and sent him away and told him to find Sherry and to make it right. That’s the last we saw of Dwight on The Walking Dead, and we’re going to see how that’s been going for him and if he’s been able to achieve either of those things that Daryl told him to do.”
Season five of Fear the Walking Dead gets underway on AMC on June 2nd.