To promote the upcoming season, co-showrunner Ian Goldberg and executive producer Michael Satrazemis appeared at WonderCon along with cast members Kim Dickens, Jenna Elfman and Christine Evangelista. The biggest scoop on the eighth season was revealed by Goldberg, who said it will feature a seven-year time jump.
Goldberg reflected on the season ending and enduring fanbase for the series. “It feels surreal; it’s amazing to be making season 8 of this show, and only because, at this point, everybody knows that this will be our final season,” Goldberg said. “Thank you so much; you are the best fans in the world, we made this show for you, and we’re so honored that we’ve been able to tell these stories for such a long time.”
The eighth and final season of the series rolls out in two six-episode parts, with the first kicking off on Sunday, May 14 and returning later this year for the final six episodes.
Goldberg also teased what fans can expect in the coming episodes. “We’re going to see a lot of life inside of PADRE, which we’ve been teasing since season 7. We really wanted to lean into what life looks like inside this place we’ve heard so much about. We’re going to do it in a conceptual way [by] jumping ahead seven years. So when we find our characters, a lot of time has passed, and we see how they’ve navigated their new realities. It’s a whole new ball game. It doesn’t get any easier for them.”
The eighth season picks up after the conclusion of season seven, when Morgan (Lennie James) and Madison (Dickens)'s hopes of rescuing Mo from Padre didn't go as planned. Now Morgan, Madison and the others brought to the island must make do under Padre's cynical rule. With the characters demoralized and dejected, the task of restoring faith in a better world falls to the person Morgan and Madison set out to save in the first place - Morgan's daughter, Mo.
AMC also released photos from the upcoming season: