Episode 14 of AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead saw Alicia Clark (Alycia Debnam-Carey) locked in a cell in a bunker and Dakota (Zoe Colletti) believing everything that Teddy (John Glover) is spouting regarding his “end is the beginning” philosophy.
However, a new theory is exploring the possibility that Dakota might just be playing Teddy in order to destroy him completely.
Alicia spent the episode being very firm with Dakota and telling her that she would never support her and that there was no “we” in their relationship. Instead, Alicia continued on in trying to find out Teddy’s plan.
This gave Teddy the opportunity to weave his brand of religious magic on Dakota, and, by episode end, she had apparently gobbled up every part of his mantra and turned on Alicia as well.
Teddy is intent on a new beginning
Teddy’s group has only just recently been introduced in Fear the Walking Dead. However, their presence has been known for some time now.
Alicia recently managed to get inside the Holding, where Teddy’s group lives. While there, she discovered many things about them, including the fact that they are very adept at self-sufficiency and that Teddy runs the whole community like some sort of cult.
In addition to this, John Dorie Sr. (Kevin Carradine) turned up in Episode 13 and revealed the backstory regarding Teddy. Most notably, this character was a serial killer in the 1970s who John Sr. managed to put away.
However, he escaped from death row when the zombie apocalypse happened and has continued his strange ways ever since.
The most recent episode of Fear the Walking Dead revealed that Teddy had located a nuclear missile and he was going to use this to destroy civilization as they knew it, making a fresh start or new beginning.
By the end of this episode, Alicia had been locked in a cell and Dakota appeared to have gone full-cult in her dedication to Teddy.
Could Dakota just be pretending to follow Teddy’s beliefs?
Dakota certainly seemed to come around to Teddy’s way of thinking relatively quickly. And considering she is young and eager to find a community that will welcome her, this seemed like a logical conclusion.
However, that might not be the case.
At the beginning of Episode 14, Dakota seemed pretty intent on destroying Teddy. She had been tracking his community’s movements for some time and had managed to convince them that she wanted to join them.
She then revealed to Alicia that she was trying to infiltrate the group in order to kill Teddy.
It seems like a pretty determined effort in order to bring someone down. Plus, how likely is Dakota to truly believe someone as unhinged as Teddy?
After all, she spent a lot of time around her mother, Virginia (Colby Minifie). While there, she was actively trying to bring her down.
Plus, there have been hints that Virginia’s parents might have been fanatically religious. When it was revealed that Virginia was Dakota’s mother and not her sister, the suggestion was there that Virginia was trying to protect Dakota from her parent’s beliefs.
If this is the case, Dakota would be well and truly used to hearing religious dogma. It would also have given her the tools to make it seem like she had converted to his beliefs.
On Reddit, some fans of Fear the Walking Dead have been discussing Episode 14 and whether or not Dakota might be playing Teddy.
“I feel like she is playing the long game,” one Redditor wrote.
“She wanted to kill Teddy at first then Alicia said she didn’t know of his plan. Wanted to hold back. So Dakota learned from that, playing loyal to Teddy so she can get close.
And when s**t gets down next episode she’ll try and stop it. Except Teddy has already seen through her and she’ll die because of it.”
However, whether this is true or not remains to be seen. Unfortunately, viewers will have to wait an extra week to find out more as Fear the Walking Dead has gone on hiatus for the Memorial day weekend.
Fear the Walking Dead goes on hiatus and will return on June 6 at 9/8c on AMC.