Theory: We already met the Helicopter People on Fear the Walking Dead

West Coast Origins

The current theory is that the Helicopter People came from the East Coast to Texas…but what if they actually started out on the West Coast? What if they moved across the country and stopped off in Texas, where Isabelle met Althea, while en route to the outposts on the East Coast?

In order for Rick’s six year absence to be plausible, he’d have to be somewhere that prevents him from getting back to his family. He destroyed the bridge to make sure his family would be safe so he has every reason to think that if he made it back to Alexandria, he could be reunited with Michonne and Judith. (And RJ, of course, but his son is a surprise)

Even if he was a prisoner of the Helicopter Community, which is very likely, there’s no way that Rick Grimes isn’t working on an escape. That means there has to be more to the story.

Let’s assume that Rick was able to escape. He’d have made it back to Alexandria by now. And if he had been able to get his hands on a radio, he could have reached someone at this point. The fact that no one has seen or heard from him makes the idea of being stuck far, far away even more plausible.

In Fear the Walking Dead 301, “Eye of the Beholder”, the Clark family is taken to an elaborate military camp somewhere in the Southwest region of the United States. Somehow, Troy Otto is in charge. The soldiers there conducted sadistic experiments as they worked to determine how fast people turned into walkers. If the current theory about the timeline holds true, this was still very early in the apocalypse but not so much that these people couldn’t have found a way to persevere even after the camp was overrun by walkers at the end of the episode.

It’s even possible that this military base could be connected to other bases and camps throughout the nation.

With so many changes taking place between the shows and comic book canon, it’s entirely possible that the Helicopter Community is based somewhere on the West Coast. After all, there have been multiple helicopters featured in Fear the Walking Dead across five seasons while there has been nary a glimpse of one on The Walking Dead.