When Fear the Walking Dead launched its fourth season earlier this year, it brought with it a very familiar face from the flagship series: Morgan Jones (Lennie James). Now ComicBook.com has reported (confirmed by Entertainment Weekly) that Austin Melia, who played Dwight on The Walking Dead, will be following him over to the prequel spin-off.
We last saw Dwight in the finale of the eighth season where he narrowly escaped being executed by Daryl (Norman Reedus) and was banished from Alexandria. Given the time-jump which took place going into The Walking Dead's ninth season, that leaves plenty of time for Dwight to make his way down to Texas to join up with the spin-off cast consisting of Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carter), Victor (Colman Domingo), John (Garret Dillahunt), Luciana (Danay Garcia), June (Jenna Elfman), Charlie (Alexa Nisenson), Al (Maggie Grace), Sarah (Mo Collins), Wendell (Daryl Mitchell), and Morgan (James). Fear the Walking Dead co-showrunner Ian Goldberg previously told EW that the denim factory recently seen in the fourth season finale will serve as a home base for the group.
What we see at the end of the season here is that their mission is to go out into the world and help people. They will be using Al’s tapes as a guide to find those people. They’ll find some other people along the way, but they’ll also realize that, as Strand said, finding people won’t be easy. They are in short supply. So, they have a strong mission that their rallying behind but who knows what obstacles they’ll hit on the way to do that, and what inhabiting the river mill will look like with the new purpose?
As for how Dwight will encounter the group, EW guesses that he'll be one of those new people who Morgan and company set out to help. The second half of the ninth season of The Walking Dead will return on February 10th, 2019, with the fifth season of Fear the Walking Dead set to debut later this year.