Fear the Walking Dead‘s life expectancy just shot up — AMC has renewed the successful spinoff for a 16-episode third season.
The pickup comes less than a week after the thriller’s Season 2 premiere drew a potent 8.8 million viewers in live+3 ratings (5.3 million of which fell into the 18-49 demo). The third season will bow in 2017.

“What Dave Erickson and Robert Kirkman have invented in Fear The Walking Dead is to be applauded. Watching Los Angeles crumble through the eyes of our characters and seeing each make decisions and try to figure out the rules of their new world – it’s fresh, eerie and compelling and we’re all in for the ride,” said Charlie Collier, president of AMC Studios. “As Victor Strand observed, ‘The only way to survive a mad world is to embrace the madness.’ We thank the millions of fans for embracing this mad world and look forward to sailing far into the future.”