In the season 8 premiere of Fear the walking dead, Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) would rather die than live as a hostage under PADRE. Last year’s Season 7 finale revealed that the previously presumed dead mother of Nick (Frank Dillane) and Alicia Clark (Alycia Debnam-Carey) escaped her apparent death in Season 4, seemingly sacrificing herself to save her children from a fiery swarm of walkers. But as Morgan Jones (Lennie James) learned, Madison survived, eventually ending up as a collector for PADRE: a mysterious organization that “saves” children – called “eggs” – by stealing them from their parents.

The first clip, which you can watch above, shows a stunned Madison struggling with her captors — going so far as to attempt suicide to escape her prison. “I know you want to die,” a guard tells a drugged Madison, “but PADRE won’t let that happen.”

AMC Networks confirmed the upcoming eighth season of Fear the walking dead, which premieres on May 14, will be the last. Season 8 of the Walking dead spin-off will consist of a final 12 episodes instead of the standard 16.

Picking up where the Season 7 finale left off – with Madison and Morgan Jones (Lennie James) heading to PADRE by boat to rescue the kidnapped Mo (Avaya White), Morgan’s baby daughter. future.

The eighth and final season of Fear the walking dead begins with the first six of 12 episodes “following Morgan and Madison’s plans to save Mo from PADRE and seven years later – Morgan, Madison and the rest of the people they brought to the island live under the cynical rule of PADRE,” the official logline said. “With our characters demoralized and dejected, the task of reviving everyone’s faith in a better world is the person Morgan and Madison set out to rescue in the first place – a now eight-year-old Mo.”

“We started talking about, ‘Well, what if Madison had been part of PADRE?'” Ian Goldberg, who serves as showrunner with Andrew Chambliss, told OW about Madison’s season-long absence and return in Season 7.” And it also helped to explain one of the big questions for us as we were in the process of bringing her back, which was that Madison was a character who had been around from the beginning of the series was established. that was all about her family. And we know if she’s still there since her last episode in season 4, why didn’t she find Alicia? Why didn’t she find her kids?”

Goldberg continued, “And this was the answer we landed on, which was that she was held hostage by PADRE and forced to do a lot of things that she didn’t want to do. And that’s where we find her. And so it was just this very interesting, heartbreaking change for Madison from being someone who was all about her family, and now has become someone who has to tear families apart.

Fear the walking dead: The Final Season premieres Sunday, May 14 on AMC and AMC+.