Fear the Walking Deads Midseason Premiere Was Designed to Be Heartbreaking

The showrunners for Fear the Walking Dead admit that they wanted the latest death on the show to be a heartbreaking moment for fans.

WARNING: Spoilers from Season 6, Episode 8 of Fear the Walking Dead, "The Door."

Fear the Walking Dead showrunners Ian Goldberg and Andrew Chambliss admitted that the death of fan-favorite John Dorie at the end of the Season 6 midseason premiere was meant to be heartbreaking.

"John Dorie has always been this incredible point of light, this optimistic, hopeful beacon in the apocalypse, and really, we looked at John Dorie and Morgan as the beginnings of this family," Goldberg told Entertainment Weekly after the episode aired on April 11. "And we knew that there had to be a cost to the war with Virginia, and, to this family...losing someone that's so much the glue and the heart of this family, putting everyone else in a position where, how are they going to move forward now, without someone so critical to who they are."

Goldberg explained that the surviving family members will continue to fight Virginia in Season 6, adding, "But now they've got this giant hole of missing John Dorie, and it's going to have huge ripple effects on everyone going forward. So it's a long way of saying we love him, and the characters love him, and people had to feel it."

Chambliss also revealed that he and Goldberg had several conversations about what the cost of Virginia's actions would be and how that would play out on the show, explaining that "it is looking at all the characters in John Dorie's orbit, and thinking about how they'll move forward, and what it will do to them."

"And ultimately it comes down to the fact that we have to remind ourselves we can't be precious about any of these characters," he continued. "And we have to do what is going to continue to evolve the show, and continue to push the show in new directions, push all the remaining characters in new directions."

In the Season 6 midseason premiere ("The Door"), Dakota shot John in the chest and pushed him off a bridge after revealing to him that she had murdered Cameron (Noah Khyle) earlier in the season. While John survived the fall and was discovered on the river's shore by his wife, June, it was soon revealed that John had been turned into a zombie.

In the same interview, Chambliss revealed that the John Dorie character has been one of their favorites to write throughout the series, which made killing the character off even more difficult. "I think as writers, we go through a mourning in the same way the characters do," he said. "And the same ways as hopefully, the audience will."

Goldberg also doubled down on the fact that they "wanted to break people's hearts, and we wanted to make it feel as though he might just be able to come out of this. So that when he doesn't, and June is faced with the unthinkable of seeing the person she loves as a walker on the shores of the cabin, it was just, I mean, honestly, it felt like the most heartbreaking ending imaginable for both of those characters."

Fear the Walking Dead stars Lennie James, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Maggie Grace, Colman Domingo, Danay Garcia, Garret Dillahunt, Austin Amelio, Mo Collins, Alexa Nisenson, Karen David, Colby Hollman, Zoe Colletti, Jenna Elfman and Rubén Blades. New episodes air Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC.