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 – The Code Review

Apologies to many readers as I was a little behind on Fear The Walking Dead episodes these past two weeks, but have now caught up and have watched the latest one today which aired not long ago.

As a general comment, as I didn’t review the last two episodes on the site. I wasn’t a big fan of the mid-season premiere but thoroughly enjoyed last week’s episode and I think it might be the best episode of the season so far.

This week in The Code, the episode is entirely focused on Morgan (Lennie James). The character has become a little lost due to the massive hurricane and is completely separated from the group. It seems to be a bit of a character trait for Morgan to do a lot of travelling in both this show and in The Walking Dead. This episode is no exception and has Morgan travelling massive distances like no one else before him.

This episode I feel gives us a chance to possibly see and predict what’s to come for the second half of this season. During Morgan’s wandering about he comes across a group of people who leave messages around the place and in different locations. It basically says to take what you need and leave what you don’t. These stations act as a supply point for groups in the area but Morgan doesn’t really know who is running it. What bothers me about this story and Morgan being involved in it is that he’s been in 7 seasons of The Walking Dead. Surely he would know that a group who can do all this with all these supply points must be organised in some way and if they cover that much land surely they should be dangerous and be approached with caution?

Eventually Morgan comes across two survivors who at first seem to be the ones doing it all and they seem like great people! But actually they are quite deceptive and dodgy people to deal with. These two new characters are Wendell (Daryl Mitchell) and Sarah (Mo Collins). My impression of these two characters is that while they are a bit dodgy and don’t have the best motives, I feel that they might not be as bad as the person we see at the end of the episode. Now I didn’t catch her name but there’s a woman we see in the final scene that was listening to Morgan’s messages on the radio and is now coming to get him. What this person is I have no idea, but she might be the lead in to some greater danger for our characters later on. I guess we’ll have to wait for next week to see that.

Overall as an episode I like what was happening here with Morgan’s journey. We are now set up with a couple of new and interesting characters which could lead into something very interesting in the next episode. What I’m hoping for the rest of the season though is that they don’t sideline Alicia’s (Alycia Debnam-Carey) character in favour of the new ones as keeping her out of things too long won’t be great at all for the show. Alicia’s really one of the few remaining originals left and I want to follow her and those original characters journeys the most (RIP Madison and Nick).

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.