The fourth season of Fear the Walking Dead premiered this week with what I thought was a very good episode that shows an enormous amount of potential for a much better series going forward with Garret Dillahunt, Maggie Grace and, eventually, Jenna Elfman.
We’ll have more on the premiere episode soon, but for now, we want to quickly dispose of a popular fan theory that has gained some steam in the last few months: That Madison Clark is Alpha, a member of The Whisperers from Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead graphic novels. The ending of the season premiere certainly set the Clark family (along with Strand and Luciana) up as antagonists to the newest members of Fear the Walking Dead, but there is little indication that they’re playing The Whisperers, a group that disguises itself by wearing the skin of zombies.
Granted, The Whisperers are introduced in The Walking Dead comics by ambushing members of The Hilltop, but aside from the ambush, the similarities stop there outside of what I think might have been a slight nod to the fan theory by having Alicia disguise herself behind her hair until Althea approaches her. Besides that, the character of Madison, at least in the trailers, bears no resemblance to Alpha in the comics and it’s unlikely that things have changed that much in the time jump. It would betray that character if she were depicted similar to Alpha, who is remorseless and uncaring, the kind of mother who would allow others to abuse her daughter.
Madison may have her problems, but lack of affection for her children is not one of them (in fact, the biggest complaint about Madison through the first three seasons was how much she smothered her children).
That is not to say that The Whisperers will not make an appearance in Fear the Walking Dead. It’s clear from the trailers that the Clark family has taken up residence in a baseball stadium, and viewers can naturally expect that an outside group might want to take it over. That outside group may be The Whisperers or a similar group based on The Whisperers. It is also possible that the Fear characters eventually evolve into The Whisperers and confront the characters on The Walking Dead in subsequent seasons, but that doesn’t track with what we know about Morgan or the new character played by Garret Dillahunt, so they would have to be removed from the series before that could happen.
Besides, Robert Kirkman has already ruled out Madison as Alpha, sort of, telling attendees of a Walker Stalker Cruise that Madison is “not Alpha, but maybe I’m lying, I’ve done that before.”
For the time being, however, I think it’s safe to say that she is definitely not and that it would take something fairly drastic — like the death of her children — for her character to take a turn that sharp, although — given that she was not with her family at the episode’s end — we cannot rule out that Madison is dead, and the scenes in which we’ve seen her on the trailers are all from flashbacks.
