There Are Spoilers In Our Fear The Walking Dead Mid-Season Final Review – Episode 7/8
So the final episodes for Fear The Walking Dead’s mid-season just aired. In these ones we see culmination of tensions between the group on the ranch and the Indians in the wilderness. The Indians want the ranch and the white people out and the ranchers aren’t getting out, is conflict the only solution?
This was a double episode week, something actually that I didn’t expect. Sometimes with TV networks there are things I just don’t get, like if there’s only 16 episodes for the whole year, why spend one of the weeks with a double? Although I’m not complaining, I’m glad I got to see things come to fruition a little sooner.
In episode 7 “The Unveiling” we see Jake (Sam Underwood) take control of the leadership at the ranch. Jake wants to get peace with the Indians at all costs and after discovering that the Indians are short on water, he negotiates a parlay with them. Peace for water it basically is. Strangely though, Jake has almost complete trust in the word of his enemy and exchanges hostages with Qaletqa (Michael Greyeyes). Ofelia (Mercedes Mason) who is now part of Qalatqa’s group goes back to the ranch and Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) stays there as a hostage.
For some reason Jake thinks everything will be fine with doing this and he should be able to get peace. But doesn’t consider the conflicting motives of the people at his ranch. His father doesn’t want peace and Madison wants her daughter back. Even more crazy she launches a plot to rescue Alicia, killing many of Qalatqa’s group and damaging relations further by breaking the parlay.
I for one enjoyed the drama of episode 7. As a show that has been a little slow in pace at times, things here escalated very quickly. Knowing that this was a double episode week and the danger that Qalatqa poses to the ranch, I thought maybe one of the big characters may even die.
Episode 8 “Children of Wrath” was the big finale episode. The drama of the last episode escalated quickly, but we also got a little of a look at what’s been happening with Ofelia all this time.
It seems Ofelia was rescued in the desert by Qalatqa and brought back to good health. Early on though we did see Jeremiah (Dayton Callie) find her in the desert as well and left her for dead because of her skin colour. At this point I knew Jeremiah was possibly a villain the whole time and his nice side we’ve seen all season was maybe about to become undone, I immediately started to dislike him.
Much of what episode 8 is, was I think about the downfall of Jeremiah. Young Nick (Frank Dillane) finds a skull in the ground with a bullet in it. When questioned about it, Jeremiah tells the story about how it’s the skull of one of the Indians. The ranch folk did a very bad thing there, they killed a bunch of them who were trespassing on their lands for disturbing their cattle and that skull was that of one of the trespassers who came to find out what happened. Now we see that Jeremiah was bad all a long and it’s Qalatqa who is the lesser evil.
Madison and her group struggle with the information about Jeremiah. Their decision is in the end just to get rid of him? I did wonder for a while after seeing the episode if this was the right thing to do. Is this actually a hero action or just something for them to survive a little longer? Why would Qalatqa who seems like a nut to me all of a sudden back off now that the old man is dead. There is still bad blood between the two groups.
The only thing I didn’t really like or understand was why they decided to give Nick a haircut? It wasn’t even a good one. Also the small scenes we saw of Victor (Colman Domingo) did give us the knowledge that he was alive, but it didn’t add much to the narrative.
As a mid-season final I found the drama of the two episodes to be quite good. All the actors did their best work here and as a season as a whole so far, things have been excellent. The storyline told here and the resolution I think has been better than what we’ve seen in past seasons of the show and I’m looking forward to seeing our characters back on screen again when the season continues later this year.
