This episode concludes the quarter mark of the final season. This episode was the weakest one so far, but that is likely towards my bias towards the Madison character. This episode bounced back and forth between current day and the early starts to PADRE.
The quick rundown of what happened in the past, which will help set the stage and understanding for my commentary during the current day is this. Shrike and her brother’s father is the general at the island site. Their dad and other soldiers were able to make contact with others, the dad told the kids that they needed to make contact with other groups so they can trade supplies in the future. They won’t be able to stay on the island forever. They also have some sort of boat dock with shipping containers that they were trying to clear out, the two kids got onto the boat secretly to give their dad some binoculars. The shipyard was overrun by walkers, killing all the soldiers, and their dad was bitten by a walker after saving the two kids, his last wish was to not let this die.
All of this seems pretty straight forward, nothing came as a surprise from this to me. But it creates a ton of questions to the current timeline. If everyone was killed how did the two kids start recruiting adults and in turn kids by themselves? Or if some of the soldiers were still at the island, why did they just go along with the PADRE voice when they never saw the General return? Lastly, why do all of these people just blindly follow a voice on the loud speaker? They never seem to want to see who this person is, they just think this person stays in the conference room forever and never leaves? This thread I find a bit hard to believe, but maybe I just question things more so than the norm. The voice does get exposed this episode.
I am enjoying this season, and the next episode is fire, it might be the best of the entire series, I just wish that they had this energy for previous seasons and was able to expand on this story line because it’s so good. I wish we were able to explore a bit more this radiation therapy for bites as it seems Finch is doing a lot better from his bite so Madison is the next test subject. June and Mo are able to stop Madison getting bit and in turn capture Shrike so they can get answers. But, watch out! When they leave the train car, Madison, June, Mo, Shrike and Dove are stopped by a group of soldiers.
This group is led by Daniel, and it is always good to see Daniel. A nice reunion for June, Madison and Daniel who all didn’t know each other was alive. This group and Daniels group intend to get all of the information of who the children, parents, and other people really are at PADRE in hopes to getting the children back to the parents. Mo stays with Daniel, while Shrike, June, Madison, and Dove get to the island to pull back the proof to Dove. Turns out Madison knew Dove’s mother who was killed, Shrike kept saying she was PADRE’s daughter, and Madison sledge hammers the two way mirror to show that PADRE’s voice is really Shrike’s brother. All of this blows up in Madison’s face, and back on the mainland the parents don’t trust Madison either.
Shrike is afraid that the parents knows where the island is now and it is a matter of time before they come to attack, she wants to take the shipyard, and wants the kids to help do it but it has been blocked off with hundreds and hundreds of walkers. That will be fun to see if and when that happens.
This episode also gave us a little news on two other characters. Daniel said that 7 years ago PADRE interviewed all the new people to see where they would be useful. Daniel was viewed as to old and not useful so he was dumped in the swamp, Luciana and Charlie were also sent somewhere else besides PADRE but doesn’t know where. So it’s very possible they are still alive out there and hopefully we see them soon. That would leave Strand, Wendell and Sarah with no information as to their whereabouts.
