The midseason finale of AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead ended with an all-out war.
Along with this, a startling revelation was made regarding Alicia’s (Alycia Debnam-Carey) time in the bunker, and Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) continues to be the worst ever in Episode 8.
All in all, it was certainly the best episode this season has to offer.
Alicia tries to escape
Ever since Alicia was locked in a government bunker by Season 6’s bad guy, Teddy (John Glover), fans have been waiting to find out her fate. It wasn’t until last week’s episode of Fear the Walking Dead that she finally showed up as the leader of the Stalkers.
Now, in the midseason finale, viewers finally got a glimpse into her time within that bunker.
First off, Alicia tries her hardest to escape. However, the other members of Teddy’s doomsday cult are there to stop her — except for that one guy who didn’t get the memo and tried to feed her to a walker first.
Alicia continues trying to escape and meets up with Will (Gus Halper) along the way.
Will is a zombie apocalypse newbie
While the zombie apocalypse has been raging for years in the Walking Dead universe, for Will, all of that is hearsay as he has been trapped inside the bunker with a very important senator all along.
This makes him a zombie virgin, and when he meets up with Alicia, it becomes immediately apparent that this guy is going to struggle topside. Although, as we know from Episode 1 of Fear the Walking Dead, he does finally get used to it and even flourishes in the radioactive world — until Victor takes him down.
But, during his time in the bunker with Alicia, a friendship is forged as the pair follow rats and use the undead senator to try and find a way out of captivity.
They have an extra incentive, too, as both know that a secret government location titled P.A.D.R.E exists somewhere outside. The only problem is that the undead senator is the only one who knows its exact location.
Alicia gets bitten
During one of these exploratory excursions, one of the nuclear warheads goes off, causing rubble and debris to cascade down over Alicia and Will, separating them from each other. While trapped, Alicia gets bitten by the senator and has to amputate her own arm in order to survive.
Will manages to get her to safety after that and she wakes a week later to a festering dripping stump of an arm. Honestly, after 11 seasons of The Walking Dead, I thought I was no longer squeamish. However, Alicia’s arm pulsing pus was more than even I could bear.
Will then announces that she is going to be totally fine because the fever broke.
Say what?!
That’s right, Alicia developed a fever after she hacked off her own arm. Now, as Will pointed out, this could have been a result of any of a number of festering grossness inside the sewer they had been trapped in.
Or, Alicia fought off the walker infection.
Which would be a first in this universe. But, as Alicia tells Morgan when she reveals her amputation to Morgan (Lennie James), she is living on borrowed time as she believes her body is still fighting off the zombie infection.
And, considering AMC has just announced that Alicia’s mother, Madison (Kim Dickens), will be returning to Fear the Walking Dead in the second half of Season 7, here’s hoping she survives long enough to see her mom and tell her about the death of Nick (Frank Dillane).
Victor Strand finds out that Alicia is alive
While all of this is going on in Episode 8 of Fear the Walking Dead, Alicia and Morgan are trying to evade capture by Victor Strand, the villain who has the uncanny knack of turning up exactly where everyone is but not actually capturing anyone.
Alicia and Morgan are not only trying to stay out of Victor’s way, but Alicia is suddenly convinced that walkers can retain memories and is using the undead to lead them to Padre.
Yeah, we all know Alicia is smarter than that, but the storyline seems to need Alicia to follow this walker in order to finally get bitten by it thanks to Victor trying to get her to join his team.
Victor takes one look at the bite and, even though he has spent the entire season trying to track her down, shoots off like the coward that he truly is.
It is here that she reveals to Morgan that he needn’t worry about her being bitten because it occurred on her metal AF amputated arm. Using her own bones, she has enclosed them in a metal cage. With this not being bada*s enough, she then attached claws to the ends of her finger bones for maximum street cred as well as killing ability.
Morgan wants Alicia to shelter in the submarine
With the news of her amputation also comes her backstory about her continued raging walker infection. Morgan doesn’t care, though, and insists that she return with her group to the submarine while they try to work out where Padre is.
Victor manages to corner them once more and finally discovers that Alicia is not about to turn. The pair spar and Alicia learns that it was Victor who killed Will all the way back in Episode 1.
The midseason finale episode of Fear the Walking Dead ends with Alicia declaring that she will take down Victor’s Tower and viewers now have to wait until April 17 to find out just how she plans to do that.
Season 7 of Fear the Walking Dead will return to AMC on Sunday, April 17, 2022.