While last week’s episode of Fear the Walking Dead took a Romeo and Juliet detour into tragic young love, Episode 11 sees a return to the same bleak landscape viewers are used to.
This time, the episode focuses on Daniel Salazar (Ruben Blades) as he struggles to maintain his grip on reality.
Previously, Daniel has struggled with his mental health, and the latest installment hones in on just how far he has fallen since he was first introduced in Fear the Walking Dead as someone who had a dangerous past and could easily f**k you up.
This week, Daniel does get glimmers of this previous version of himself. However, Luciana (Danay Garcia) takes advantage of that — after telling Arno (Spenser Granese) not to do the exact same thing.
Daniel goes searching for Ofelia
As the title of this episode suggests, Episode 11 focuses on Daniel’s daughter, Ofelia. Or, more to the point, the fact that Daniel thinks that she is still alive.
Luciana is helping Daniel by playing memory games with him to help keep his brain active, but this doesn’t stop him from sneaking off the submarine after he draws a boat card and decides that Ofelia is on a boat.
Luciana and Wes (Colby Hollman) are tasked with finding him, but they are quickly rounded up by Arno and his ragtag group.
Arno wants to know where the weapons are
As viewers have seen in the Season 7 return of Fear the Walking Dead, Arno holds a pretty mean grudge against Alicia Clark (Alycia Debnam-Carey).
He also wants to get his hands on the weapons that Dwight (Austin Amelio) is hunting down.
You see, he has been listening in to all the talk going on with Morgan’s (Lennie James) group via walkie-talkie, and I really think everyone should be smarter than that at this stage in the apocalypse.
For future reference to everyone in Fear the Walking Dead: people can listen in on your radio conversations, so don’t say anything you want to keep a secret out loud.
Regardless, now Arno wants the weapons and teases Wes with certain death over a group of walkers until Daniel goes renegade and reveals the coordinates of the weapons cache.
Daniel has a flawed plan
Daniel has revealed the coordinates because they are the wrong ones, and it gives them a decent chunk of time to escape their containment.
However, the only reason Daniel wants to escape is that he thinks Ofelia is still alive and living onboard the yacht that Arno’s group is using. He also thinks this dinged-up little watercraft is the Abigail, the ship that Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) had way back at the beginning of Fear the Walking Dead.
Spoiler alert: She’s not there.
Arno gets tortured
Daniel gets super p***ed that Arno was lying to him about Ofelia’s location and goes off to kill the guy by feeding him to some walkers.
Wes and Luciana manage to intervene just in time for Arno to reveal that there are a bunch of radioactive walkers inside a close-by crater but that someone is letting them out.
Once he’s made his big reveal, Arno dies, and the group manages to sway his followers to become Team Alicia easily.
You know, the enemy that Arno hated? Yeah, I’m pretty sure people this dumb and easily led astray should have been killed off already in the zombie apocalypse.
But since Morgan and Alicia need people to help overthrow Victor Strand, it stands to reason they join up right away.
Luciana is the worst
Throughout the entire episode, Luciana has been very clear in making sure Daniel was reminded of reality whenever he slipped back into thinking that Ofelia was still alive.
In the process, Daniel reveals to her that he only really sees anything clearly when he thinks of his daughter, and that is how he remains focused and able to plot things such as escaping from captivity.
He also ‘fesses up that he believes his mind is getting muddled because he never told Ofelia exactly what he did for a living before the zombie apocalypse, and he wants to make things right with her. He thinks this will fix his mind.
However, once he tells her that his mind is only ever clear and focused when he thinks of his daughter, Luciana does the worst thing ever, the one thing she has tried to stop everyone else from doing: using Daniel’s confusion to their own advantage.
At the end of the episode, Luciana lies to Daniel and tells him that Arno told her Ofelia is alive and living in the Tower with Victor Strand.
And now she has the perfect human weapon in Daniel.
At that moment, Daniel becomes super-focused once more and disproves the theory that this episode would be his last.
Wes is also the worst
Wes also taps out because he is sick of people being d**ks
He tells Luciana he’s going off on his own because he can’t stand just how awful people always end up being to get their own way.
However, he is also a liar.
Episode 11 of Fear the Walking Dead closes with Wes approaching the Tower. He calls in and wants to speak to Victor. When questioned as to why Victor would want to speak to him, Wes reveals that he knows something, and it seems likely this character has just become Team Victor.
As to what happens next remains to be seen, and viewers will have to turn in next week to find out more.
Season 7 of Fear the Walking Dead airs every Sunday night on AMC.