There Are Spoilers In Our Fear The Walking Dead: Blackjack Review – Episode Discussion

So the latest episode of Fear The Walking Dead just aired and this one allowed us to catch up with a couple of old characters that have been long absent for many episodes now such as Victor and Luciana. Blackjack also progresses with Morgan’s leadership of his new group and their box maintenance business.

The side of the episode which focused on Strand was all about the character being stuck. At this point it seems that Strand isn’t really going anywhere at all and his character I guess is in limbo right now. Luckily he wasn’t stuck on his own and had John Dorie there to motivate Victor to get back into the main plot of the show. It seems by the time the episode ended the two characters were well on their way to possibly meeting up with Morgan and the rest of the group very soon. I was a little disappointed with the Strand story line in this episode. It was long and stretched out and nothing all that much happened at all.

Luciana gets a bit of a better tale. She ends up helping a stranger who she finds and he’s a little injured. Luciana does a lot of good work in this episode and helps the old man quite a bit. This episode does help the Luciana character a little in that it establishes her as a good person.

Like last week though after June helped a sick Althea, Morgan is heard on the radio. Luciana will likely meet up with Morgan in the future as well and I think the same thing will happen to all characters in the show, even Alicia who is seen for a minor moment in this episode.

Morgan’s side of the story is where things are a little interesting. There’s a massive threat to his group from a single woman who seems to be named on IMDB only as ‘filthy woman’ right now. She’s stolen the SWAT truck, turned a couple of people into walkers and is now opening fire on the road on Morgan’s truck and his group. The episode ends in a cliffhanger after her attack, although I’m willing to bet quite safely that no one dies from the incident as Morgan did yell to everyone to get down.

As far as the Morgan arc is going. I am not too sure I like the angle they are taking with the villain. It makes no sense to me that she would be that triggered by the boxes Morgan is leaving around. Although this may be explained later, but for now it seems far fetched to go to all these lengths such as attacking Morgan’s group which is armed and everything else she’s doing so far. I’m curious to see where they are going with this arc, but so far to me she doesn’t seem to be a very strong villain as villains go in Fear The Walking Dead.

Overall this episode did quite a bit to bring more characters into the Morgan leadership arc. There’s a villain after his group and they’re having trouble with her as Morgan hasn’t really done anything at all to strike back yet. I’d be interested to see what happens when Alicia meets up with everyone else as she seems to be the most ruthless of our heroes at the moment.

There Are Spoilers In Our Fear The Walking Dead: Weak Review

So the latest episode of Fear The Walking Dead just went to air and this week our characters who have become separated from each other in recent weeks continue to try to find their way after the hurricane. This episode also further introduces us to some of the newer characters.

One of the interesting parts of this episode was the development of Althea. I feel like that out of the characters introduced this year, this is the character that’s been focused on the least, but probably has a lot of potential to be interesting. In this episode the character becomes sick and someone steals her SWAT vehicle. The vehicle is quite precious to her and she can barely handle being without it.

One of the opportunities that I felt was missed out on with this episode was that really they could have used Althea’s moment of need in this episode to further develop her character. The show has been quite known recently to use flashbacks to earlier times to tell the story of a character’s past, but this didn’t happen here at all. We could have just got a little monologue about why the SWAT vehicle was so important to her, but we didn’t. I felt it was just a big missed opportunity to develop her character and the importance of the vehicle to her.

Much of the episode had focused in on Morgan, the new characters from last week and Althea and June. These two groups are separated and are hearing each other on the walkie talkies. The episode did a lot to reunite the two groups together. By the end of this week’s episode, it seemed that Morgan was starting to emerge as the leader of this new group of people. I’ve been noticing that his character is developing or moving towards leading and advising rather than following and advising. This is a nice direction for the character and I look forward to seeing Morgan’s character arc progress in the future.

Towards the end of the episode we see what appears to be the mid-season villain take out a minor character that caused June some trouble early on in this episode. The main reason this ends up important is because the woman now possesses the SWAT vehicle, which is armoured and has mounted guns. This would be a massive threat if used against Morgan and the rest of this group.

What I missed this week was that we didn’t get any new details on what Alicia is up to. Also where in the world is Victor Strand? What is he even doing? It was overall a good episode, but one that I felt missed quite a few opportunities to develop characters further. It mainly acted as an episode to reunite characters who were separated after the hurricane happened. Hope to see something more next week.

There Are Spoilers In Our Fear The Walking Dead: Now One’s Gone Review

This week’s episode just aired and it’s an important one as it’s also the mid-season final for the show. We are finally seeing the flashback arc come to an end and this episode answers some important questions about what happened to Madison and the rest at the baseball settlement.

Coming into this episode, I was quite excited to see what they were going to do. I had guessed last week that we were going to go back and discover what Althea’s backstory was all about. This week we did actually do that, but Althea’s backstory was not really a background for her character, but more of a bridge so that we could integrate Madison into the story. In some ways I don’t actually like this because as we know Althea came into Fear The Walking Dead earlier this season and joined in with Morgan and we’ve been watching her journey in the present for the most part. But we do a flashback of her just once and she is talking to Madison of all people. I find it a little hard to believe that Althea was just there when Madison was a little lost in the time period before she found the baseball settlement.

If the season in chronological order, Madison’s finding of the settlement with Althea maybe would have been one of the first scenes, or one of the very early ones as the flashback is before everything this season happened. Althea does interview Madison and we hear from her character about all the things she cares about, mainly looking after her family. Madison as a character we’ve gotten to know over four seasons is mainly motivated by caring for both Alicia and Nick. That side of Madison’s character is reinforced very strongly in this episode through the interviews with Althea.

I had been waiting for Madison to return to the show all season as she’s probably the most important character in the show. With Nick gone early on this season and both him and Madison being more of the leaders of the show, I felt that there’s quite a void this season. Sure Alicia has stood up and done very well, but without Madison there in the group it feels a bit empty. My hopes of having Madison back in the show were dashed however as it seems the writers decided to do away with the character. Which seems to me to be a massive loss for the show. We finally get to learn about the final moments at the baseball settlement and learn that Madison heroically led the walkers into the stadium and away from Alicia and the rest in the Land Rover. This basically saved her family and everyone in the core group, but sadly Madison was trapped in the stadium and never made it out. It’s a sad day for all fans of Madison.

After watching the episode I had thought that Madison probably could return to the show as we never saw her body actually dead like we did with Nick early this season. Fear The Walking Dead people will remember what happened when Salazar was dead and surprisingly brought back. I had thought maybe we’d see Madison when the show returns because we didn’t see her die at all. But I did see on Kim Dickens’ Instagram, she did post saying she’s done with the character. So that’s it! I do wish to say that I thought that Kim Dickens did a fine job with Madison this season and for the whole time she did play Madison on the show. Madison and Nick were the most interesting characters to watch in the show and it’s going to be tough watching it when it returns with them gone. Alicia is one of my favourites too, but now the show has lost the family element which it had since it began. With all the new characters, it’s almost like a new show now.

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It’s been an honor to play such a strong, badass, empowered, fierce leader. I’ll miss playing Madison Clark but she will always be with me (because it’s me 😉). Thank y’all for watching ❤️❤️❤️

A post shared by Kim Dickens (@kjdickens) on Jun 10, 2018 at 7:21pm PDT

Other parts of the episode featured Alicia being very ruthless and aggressive towards Althea and the rest in the SWAT truck. There’s a confrontation between Alicia’s group and Althea’s group while Laura and Morgan go to search for medicine for John Dorie. The action scenes in between the two groups are pretty good. It was interesting to see Althea blow away all the walkers with the guns from the SWAT truck. Also when Alicia got actually into the truck and started threatening Althea things got quite tense.

I have to say, I am liking this more ruthless Alicia character. I also did enjoy Morgan in this episode. Morgan is a little less violent than most characters and his ability to calm Alicia and the contrast between the two characters at the moment is interesting. I would be interested to see next season how Alicia and Morgan interact and what situations they get into when the show returns.

Overall the episode was interesting and it’s nice to finally have this flashback arc come to an end. I don’t really enjoy flashback storytelling at all and this one was a little frustrating to watch at times. I hope the next arc doesn’t continue with this method. Where Alicia’s character is at the moment is a tough place, but I think the character has a lot of potential to grow when the show returns. Hopefully the writers do something interesting with her. On the other hand, I don’t really like that Madison is out of the show completely, she’s basically the lead character and her presence this season was very minimal. There wasn’t much in this season for Madison make a big impact and there’s no major moments for her character really at all except for in this episode where she saved everyone. To be honest, I’m a bit disappointed about that. I’m looking forward to the show returning, but without Madison and Nick there’s a massive void to fill. Who will step up and lead the group?

If you want to discuss the episode with me or others, be sure to comment below with your thoughts about this week’s Fear The Walking Dead.

Fear The Walking Dead airs every Monday on Showcase on Foxtel at 1:30pm and 7:30pm. Weekly reviews and episode discussions on Resident Entertainment.