Fear The Walking Dead bosses discuss that unexpected character return

Fear The Walking Dead’s latest episode, “Six Hours,” featured the unexpected return (sort of) of a character we hadn’t seen since season 6: Emile LaRoux, played by Demetrius Grosse, was a bounty hunter hired by Virginia (Colby Minifie) to track down Morgan Jones (Lennie James). But he ended up getting killed by the very man he was supposed to find.

With the help of his friend Isaac (Michael Abbott Jr.), Morgan killed Emile, took his clothes and weapons, and then left behind his zombie head for Virginia to find. It was a brutal move on Morgan’s part, but can we blame the guy? If Morgan hadn’t killed Emile, Emile may have killed Morgan.

In any case, the most recent episode of Fear The Walking Dead brought back Emile in a rather interesting way. While Emile is still very much dead, his twin brother Josiah wants revenge. Josiah is played by Grosse as well, hence why I said this was “sort of” a character return.

It was a wild way to end the episode, especially because it had been a while since we had seen Emile and his decapitated zombie head. The sight of Josiah threw me off for a second until I saw him pull out Emile’s head.

Morgan James had better watch out, because Josiah does not look happy.

Fear The Walking Dead’s epic character twist

Fear the Walking Dead showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg spoke with Entertainment Weekly about Grosse’s return. “We absolutely fell in love with Demetrius Grosse’s portrayal of the character of Emile,” Goldberg said. “That’s why if you go back and watch that episode, there was a line when Emile is at the campfire at the beginning where he talks about the beans being his brother’s recipe. We intentionally did that then because, in our back pocket, we always knew we wanted to have this moment.”

“The moment we wrote that, we wanted to have the moment later where a hand reached into the box carrying that head, held it up, and we saw that it was the same face staring back at the head,” Goldberg continued. “That’s where the initial inspiration was. Beyond that, we will learn more about this character, Josiah. We will see more of him. But for now, that’s all I’ll say, because there’s a lot of fun stuff with him to come.”

This is one of the things I love about The Walking Dead universe. The producers deliberately include subtle moments that later come full circle in some unexpected way. Josiah’s introduction into this season of Fear The Walking Dead is the perfect example, and I’m super excited to see what they have planned for him.

Fear The Walking Dead airs new episodes every Sunday on AMC at 9:00 p.m. EST or on AMC+ a week early.

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h/t Digital Spy