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A major change in the back half of Fear the Walking Dead Season 5 will see the Walking Dead Universe “expand in a big way” going into the recently renewed sixth season, tease showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg.

“Without giving something away, the world is going to expand in a big way and by the time we get to the end of the season, it’s really going to shake the entire group to the very core and really change the show in a way that will launch us into Season 6, in a really big way,” Chambliss said at San Diego Comic-Con.

“We’re constantly striving to change what Fear is and reinvent it. So just as soon as everyone thinks they’ve figured out what we’re doing, we change things up, and that’s gonna continue through Season 5. There’ll be a big change at the end of Season 5.”

Both Chambliss and Goldberg, as well as characteristically tight-lipped TWD chief content officer Scott Gimple, offered little in the way of hints. But according to the showrunners, an “epic” buildup leads to a payoff that’s “inevitable.”

“We really see Season 5 as one big epic story, but as you’ll see if you continue to watch, it all builds to an ending which very much sets up what the design of Season 6 is going to be and we’ve been planning it for a while,” added Goldberg.

“When you go back and watch it all,” Goldberg teased, what follows “might seem inevitable.”

A revamped Fear Season 4 introduced The Walking Dead veteran Morgan (Lennie James) to the spinoff, who was followed by the addition of Dwight (Austin Amelio) in Season 5.

Even as the flagship and the spinoff grow further intertwined with a mixing of characters and a continuation of the story of the CRM organization that first launched on TWD, a merging of the two shows is still considered unlikely.

“Well, I think if you merge the two shows, then you only have one show,” Fear star Jenna Elfman said of the long speculated theory during a December convention appearance.

“And I think that you can’t have one show with like [that many characters] — you’d have so many actors, you guys would be waiting weeks for a second scene between characters you love. So I don’t know that becoming one show would even be what you guys would want, because it’s too much. You can’t put that much into an hour.”

Fear the Walking Dead returns with its documentary style mid-season 5 premiere Sunday, August 11 on AMC.