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'Fear The Walking Dead' Is One Step Closer To Running Into Rick Grimes

by Leah Marilla Thomas
Ryan Green/AMC

A new member of that mysterious helicopter group appeared on Sunday's Fear The Walking Dead, along with her story. While Althea promised to keep the secrets she shared, we can still wonder where Isabelle is going on Fear The Walking Dead and try to parse through the clues she gave as to the group's identity and what they're up to.

Isabelle's group not only has zombie-proof uniforms and customized weapons, they also have strict protocol that requires them to kill anyone who threatens to reveal their mission to the outside world. Played by actor Sydney Lemmon, Isabelle is alone after her partner (who the group calls "the lead") is killed in action. Later, we learn that she killed him when he tried to desert.

You'd think, if the groups was so secretive, that they wouldn't fly around in helicopters marked with a mysterious three-ringed symbol that's also on their armor... but nevermind that. What we do know is that Isabelle's team is "Ground 17," according to radio chatter, and that, at one point, one of these helicopters flew over Alexandria, Virginia. Other than that, their base location is classified.

Even as Isabelle and Althea bond, the former doesn't reveal much about the organization that she is a part of — she flat refuses to tell Al what they are called or where they are located. But it sounds close the Walking Dead group, right?

Ryan Green/AMC

"We are a force that are not living for ourselves or for now," she says. "You have your stories, already making every day the past. We have the future." Isabelle believes in this cause, but she's still scared of her group. When they tell her over the radio that a reclamation team is coming to get her if she can't refuel, Isabelle is worried. "It's bigger than you," she says later. "It's bigger than me. It's bigger than all of us," she says.

While tearfully saying goodbye to Althea, finally Isabelle reveals that she's from Indiana. Could these people be based somewhere in the Midwest? One fan theory is that this is The Commonwealth from the Walking Dead comics, partially based on the uniforms and partially based on that radio message in the TWD finale. In the source material, The Commonwealth is located in Ohio and has almost fifty thousand survivors, so this would check out.

Ryan Green/AMC

Ohio and Indiana share a border, so it's possible. So many regions of the United States have been largely undocumented on The Walking Dead and Fear The Walking Dead. The original series has really only explored Georgia and at least North Carolina (if not South Carolina and/or Tennessee) en route to Virginia and the DC Metro Area. Fear has traveled further, starting in California and visiting Mexico, Arizona, New Mexico, and now Texas. We don't know how folks are faring in the Northwest, Midwest, or New England. One can only hope that Isabelle's people comes from one of those areas.

Hopefully we'll see Isabelle again. If not for more information about where Rick is and who these future-forward soldiers are, but for her and Al to reunite! Their flirtation was much too brief, and good 'ships are so hard to come by in the zombie apocalypse. They absolutely need to be together again. Wherever she's going, she better come back soon.