'Fear The Walking Dead' S02E08 Review
The mid-season finale of' Fear The Walking Dead' aired last night. At the start, Celia was furious at Strand for "killing" Thomas. Celia has this delusional idea that the infected aren't dead, as we saw her keeping a host of infected locked away in the cellar last week. She gives Strand 1 day to leave, along with the others.
Daniel is seemingly losing his mind: having nightmares about his past, horrible visions of Ofelia, and even communicating with his dead wife.
Travis is looking for Chris, and Alicia tells him about the knife situation we saw last week. Travis leaves the compound in search of Chris with a noticeable limp. He comes upon a small house where he asks the man living there if he saw Chris.
As Celia has gotten in Nick's head about the state of the infected and in an effort to save his family from expulsion, Nick finds Luis and brings him home, as he is the son of Celia. Celia allows them to stay because of this.
Back with Travis, he sees a shadow move under a door and the man tells him Chris has taken his son hostage and to not tell Travis he is there. Travis barges in and frees the young boy from Chris. Chris tries to run away but Travis tackles him. Chris pulls a knife and nearly kills Travis, citing that he's become a monster and cannot return to the group.
Nick, set out to find Travis, finds him but Travis tells him he cannot go back with Chris in the state he's in. He tells Nick to tell Madison that he never found him.
Madison and Celia have another conversation about Nick, as Celia shows Madison the infected she has locked up. Madison has been acting like she wants to understand Celia, but winds up locking her in the cell, leaving her to die.
Daniel escapes his restraints after conversing with a vision of his dead wife. He dumps gasoline throughout the basement and sets it ablaze, burning down the compound and presumably killing himself in the process.
As Madison, Alicia, Strand and Nick are set to escape the compound, Nick decides not to go with them, as his new thoughts on the infected are clouding his judgement as to what's really going on, as the episode ends.
The theme of this episode seemed to be insanity. Many of the characters completely lost their minds, such as Celia, Daniel, Chris and Nick. The way Celia got to Nick was reminiscent of a drug addiction, as pointed out in the episode by Strand. Daniel's trip into madness was strangely set up for me, but was intense when paired with his nightmares about what he went through as a child in killing soldiers in his home country. Chris has been heading down this path for weeks now. I'm not sure what Travis can actually do for him at this point.
The episode overall was fine, not great, especially for a mid-season finale, but I look forward to its return.
My rating: 7 out of 10
