Much like Fear the Walking Dead, I am popping up out of nowhere. This is the last season for Fear, and it is also on a shortened schedule this year. They are ending with 12 episodes instead of the typical 16. So we will have two quick short sprints 6 episode halves from my understanding. In my writing past, I noticed that what I was doing wasn’t really writing, more so recapping. So if anyone is still with me here for season 8, thank you, and if not, I hope you enjoyed your stay.
For those who don’t easily remember, and I was on that same boat (pun), the tail end of last season ended with Morgan and Madison on a boat to PADRE with the mission to save Mo from capture. Unfortunately, Morgan is up against long odds because not only does he not know how many people he is up against, but Madison is always blindfolded on the trip to PADRE, so he has no idea where he will be and can’t even formulate an exit plan ahead of time.
That leads us to the start of the episode. Madison and Morgan are in some sort of interrogation room, and PADRE is trying to recruit Morgan to be a collector. They only want children and the parents need to be left behind. Madison and Morgan can make a move so Morgan can get Mo and escape the island.
We are now able to get a glimpse inside PADRE by way of an unknown girl. She tries to fight a walker without teeth but fails. She tries to get some extra training and takes on some extra chores to get that training. By accident, she ends up outside Madison’s jail cell. Madison tricks the girl into trying to kill herself when she recognizes a scar on the inside of the girl’s wrist. She realizes that it is Morgan’s daughter Mo. The girl says she is eight years old, which freaks Madison out.
This is the big reveal for the episode and probably the season that we have a seven-year time jump. This leads to many questions. The first one is where does that put Fear’s timeline in relation to the flagship show? We know the flagship was at least five years ahead before the last season, so they might be together now. A favorite idea online is that Morgan will lead people back to Alexandria, and everyone will merge, so that is possible.
Some of the other questions include, is Alicia officially off the show? I think she is, she was sick last everyone else thought, but she was able to walk into the distance on her own. Did we see the last of Charlie? This one, I go back and forth on. In one aspect, I would imagine they would need a character recast, but also, she was close to death at the end of the last season, and it’s hard to think PADRE would want to spend so many resources on someone who isn’t super young (which seems to be PADRES plan). The next is, what happened to Dwight and Sherry’s child? Sherry was pregnant going to the end of the season. This is brought up in episode 2. Lastly, what is everyone else’s current state/location?
Madison has found a new purpose to continue living in, delivering Mo to Morgan, so she takes her off the island. It doesn’t go as planned, however, as Morgan now works for PADRE as a collector, and later we find out that Grace works for PADRE as well when she comes in to save Morgan, Madison, and Wren (Mo) from walkers in the marsh.
An awful lot has changed in the last seven years, and we don’t know why. After everyone is saved, PADRE comes to pick them up as Morgan AND Grace shockingly called PADRE to take Mo back to the island. Madison, who was at first not welcomed back on the island, is now brought back for some reason. Meanwhile, Morgan is retired as a collector and brought back to the island, seemingly to be imprisoned. Grace is sent back to her outpost, and Wren is taken back to PADRE. Wren convinces the leader that she won’t be a problem going forward, but we can tell that isn’t the case.
Overall, this was a fairly average episode, I would say. It wasn’t great by any means, but it had a lot of plot setup it had to get through. It sort of dragged the episode down a bit, but it is important for things going forward. The big takeaway from me on this episode is the two people who have been inside the PADRE island the longest, Madison and Wren, are the two who insist that going back there is not the best thing and that they should all leave the area. I sense that will be a key point going forward as things unravel.
