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Rick Grimes' Connection To 'Fear The Walking Dead' Was Just Confirmed By This New Arrival

Ryan Green/AMC

Spoilers ahead for Fear The Walking Dead. There's officially no denying Fear The Walking Dead's connection to Rick Grimes departure from original series anymore. In case you need a refresher, here's what that helicopter means on Fear The Walking Dead. The post-apocalyptic worlds are about to collide in a major way.

It's no longer just a fun Easter Egg that Althea found a symbol on some papers, or that you can maybe hear Morgan, Alicia, and Dwight's voices on Jadis/Anne's radio on an episode of The Walking Dead. That helicopter that Morgan and Alicia saw on Fear is identical to the one that took Rick Grimes away in The Walking Dead Season 9, Episode 5. They have the same symbol, three interlocking white circles, and (though it's not visible in every shot) the letter "A" marked on the side. If it's not exactly the same helicopter, it definitely comes from the same place.

As Walking Dead devotees will tell you, Rick Grimes didn't actually die after Andrew Lincoln's "final episode" was widely publicized and built up. He was kidnapped by Jadis, also known as Anne, and taken away by a helicopter. She calls him a "B, not an A" — and that's all we know about these mysterious people that the trash artist was apparently working for this whole time.

Who could have guessed that we'd get answers to what happened to Rick on The Walking Dead... on Fear The Walking Dead? Rick and Morgan might actually reunite after all.

Jackson Lee Davis/AMC

Now, we know that the same people have been kidnapping survivors on Fear The Walking Dead as well. They're armed, uniformed, and may come in pairs. They took Althea. While John, June, and Dwight went off in search of Sherri, and Luciana was teaching a lesson on The Little Prince to Dylan, Morgan and Alicia found their siblings leading a gang of teens. Max and Annie's group are the ones that have been doing the zombie body part art, and the people who took Al have scared them too. When the helicopter flies overhead, they don't know what it means either.

"Those people," says Annie in the latest episode of Fear, "they came in that" — referring to the helicopter. "Why are they leaving," asks Max. Maybe, as his sister suggests, they got what they came for already. Maybe they're going to get Rick Grimes from the Alexandria area, and will arrive with him in a later episode. Maybe, since everything seems to be connected now, Dwight's wife Sherri is with them as well.

Ryan Green/AMC

While both Dwight and Morgan have appeared on both shows, with this helicopter Fear The Walking Dead is bridging the gap between itself and the original series in a major way plot-wise. Characters stumbling into a new group is one thing, but being antagonized by the same mysterious villains is another.

This turn of events will likely provide some key information about those upcoming Walking Dead films about Rick's fate, too. This also opens the doors for characters from the original comic book source material, who were never part of the AMC series, to make their way to Fear instead. Wouldn't that be interesting? Everything is coming together, and this ominous helicopter seals it.