'Fear the Walking Dead' just appeared to introduce a cure to the zombie apocalypse. The showrunners tell us what's really going on.

• Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the final season of "Fear the Walking Dead."
• June (Jenna Elfman) seemingly found a way to contain the zombie virus in the "TWD" universe using radiation.

Did "Fear the Walking Dead" just introduce a potential cure to the zombie apocalypse on its final season?

Recent events on the "TWD" spin-off sure make it seem like that could be the case.

On season eight, episode two, "Blue Jay," we learned the mysterious P.A.D.R.E. community has been trying to find a cure for zombie bites for some time.

In the past, if you were bit or scratched by a walker it typically took a few hours to turn into one of the undead. On the first season of "The Walking Dead," Dr. Jenner said the fastest report he recorded of a reanimation was three minutes.

June (Jenna Elfman), who goes by the codename Blue Jay now, starts experimenting on test subjects by exposing them to doses of radiation.

"I saw someone survive a bite longer than anyone I had ever seen and she had been exposed to radiation," June said, while finally explaining Alicia's (Alycia Debnam-Carey) mystery illness last season.

June's team made some real headway in slowing down the progress of the zombie infection.

After taking a close read through the files shown on-screen, people have survived about a week tops with June's treatment.

Unfortunately, a few days aren't going to be good enough for Dwight and Sherry's son, Finch.

At the end of episode two, he unwillingly became June's latest test subject after the leader of P.A.D.R.E. forced a reanimated zombie head to clamp down on the kid's neck.

The motivation and stakes to find a cure have never been higher.

June claimed that she was able to stop the zombie infection once. Unfortunately, the amount of radiation it took to do so was intolerable.

So it's wild that Finch is shockingly in decent health on this week's episode despite taking a zombie bite to the neck.

In any other instance, similar injuries have proven almost instantly fatal in this universe. But miraculously, Finch doesn't appear to be clinging to life at the moment. He's taking it like a champ and oddly seems to be thriving.

What's going on? Is this kid the cure? Is he temporarily OK?

Before the season began, Insider asked showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg all about June's experiments, Finch's walker bite, and the connection to Alicia.

Don't get too excited about a cure just yet. It seems like June may have just found a way to prolong the infection from taking over.

Did June just discover the cure to the walker apocalypse?

Chambliss: Well, if she did then she deserves a Nobel Prize. But the one thing we should say is that, what she was doing on that train, what P.A.D.R.E.'s doing on that train, really is akin to kind of a more advanced form of amputation. It's trying to remove the infected tissue before the infection can spread.

So even if what they're doing in that train ends up working, it's not a cure. It's not going to end the zombie apocalypse. It would certainly be a very useful tool to have to allow people to survive, particularly if you get bit somewhere where you can't just chop off an arm or a leg.

I think a lot of people thought introducing radiation to "Fear the Walking Dead" last season may have been a little silly. But, now, it plays such a major role on this final season because, as we learn on episode two, P.A.D.R.E. was and still is trying to find this cure to walker bites.

What inspired this search for a cure to be a part of the final season and was this always part of your plan — introducing the radiation on the series as a way to hopefully find a cure? Or is it part of the larger world-building for "The Walking Dead" universe? We know there were characters on "The Walking Dead: World Beyond" spin-off who have also been running trials for potential cures.

Goldberg: The fact that June was using radiation as part of this treatment is certainly an echo of elements that we've brought into the show in the past. But what interested us the most about these were the psychology behind why P.A.D.R.E. would want to do them in the first place and what is driving them that they would subject the kids that they've sworn to protect to these experiments, which very much put their lives, in peril.

At the end of the day that was really what it was about for us. And we think the world-building is cool, too, and what it does, the sort of aperture that it opens to the rest of the universe.

But, ultimately it was just about about P.A.D.R.E. and digging into who they are and why they're doing what they're doing.

Chambliss: June says the initial impetus for the idea of using radiation to try to kill the infection was the fact that she saw Alicia survive a bite. And then we also see P.A.D.R.E. has a very kind of specific interest in Madison and that, in fact, may be the reason they're drawing her blood. So all of these things are kind of tying back into the story we've told and the story that we will tell.

Thank you for mentioning Alicia. Can you guys explain the thought process that went into introducing Sherry and Dwight's son Finch, skipping past the pregnancy and birth, and then deciding to have him get savagely bit in front of his parents?

Goldberg: Dwight and Sherry have had a very difficult road both together and separately since they started on "The Walking Dead," starting with their journey in the sanctuary, to their separation from each other, finding each other again on "Fear," and finally bringing them to a hopeful place where Sherry got pregnant in season seven. They had something to fight for. And then right at that moment of maximum hope, it's been ripped out from under them.

We learn in this episode that Finch has been living, having no idea that either of them are his parents, and this episode kind of represents what they think is going to be a chance to be a family. Of course, the opposite happens. When they're starting to come together Finch, you know, obviously becomes a terrible victim of the treatment of P.A.D.R.E.

Dwight and Sherry are just two characters that it seems like no matter how far they step forward, they always get kicked back and that's going to test them. They've been to some dark places before as a couple and this season is gonna be no exception to that.

It seems like Finch is faring oddly OK right now at the end of episode three. And it did make me wonder, did you guys originally want to maybe make Alicia some sort of cure to the walker apocalypse before she left the series last season?

June mentions her name as inspiration in the search for the cure and it seems like maybe Dwight and Sherry's son is maybe now being positioned for that potential role.

Chambliss: [Laughs.] No. So, that was not the plan.

But, Finch will play an important role going forward both in the way that he motivates Dwight and Sherry and also in the way that P.A.D.R.E. is able to see what happens with their experiment.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. The first half of the final season of "Fear the Walking Dead" continues to air Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC and is available to stream on AMC+