Airing Sundays at 9pm on AMC in the US
Director: Sarah Boyd
Writers: Melissa Scrivner-Love

Essential Plot Points:

• As a pitched gun battle breaks out between the survivors and the Vultures, the badly injured John dreams of his time with Naomi/Laura. She makes a run for medical supplies as the Vultures flee. Naomi begs Mel to stop the ambulance but he accelerates away and-
• Explodes!
• Alicia, it turns out, has a grenade launcher.
• As the fight restarts, Luciana comes face to face with Charlie. She pulls a gun on the little girl, who apologizes and flees when Luciana is distracted.
• Nearby, Al is filming the fight. Morgan persuades her to get John and she arrives with the SWAT truck just in time to stop Alicia executing them both.
• Morgan rescues Charlie too, which totally won’t come back to haunt them, and they flee with the original survivors all firing as they go.
• In the truck, Naomi tells Al to go to the stadium. When it’s pointed out that the stadium fell, she replies ‘That’s why we have to go there.’
• In the past, Madison and Nick are working on the new crops when the call comes in. Charlie has arrived at the gates, and she needshelp.
• In the present, John is running out of time. Al, pretty reasonably, asks what they did to the survivors. Charlie explains that what happened wasn’t Naomi’s fault. It was Charlie’s.
• In the past, Naomi and the others arrive at a crash site. It’s a Vulture bus and the driver is alive but badly hurt. Nick is understandably very dubious about Charlie’s story of being on the bus and a split between the Vultures.
• Madison is all in, as she always is. They’re rescuing the driver, who turns out to be Mel. No questions.
• In the past, Luciana, Alicia and Strand hole up in one of the only functional cars. They’re exhausted, furious and about to leave when Alicia spots Mel dragging himself from the wreck of the ambulance.
• She walks over, and, shaking with rage, asks Mel how long Naomi was with them. The dying Vulture is unable to answer and Madison is unable to care. She kills him.
• In the past, the bus driver, who turns out to be Mel, begs them to let him go. The stadium isn’t safe. And Ennis is leading a herd towards them. A herd made of the hundreds, and hundreds, of victims of the Vultures.
• In the infirmary, Mel holds Naomi at knife point. It doesn’t work but his words, emphasizing just how close the stadium is to falling, sure seem to.
• Madison takes Naomi’s room apart to reinforce the walls. Naomi finds her, and tells her that Mel’s right and they should leave. Madison won’t hear it,. explains about the ‘Just In Case’ car and that when she saw Alicia’s response, she vowed never to use it.
• Madison gives Mel the Just In Case land rover and throws him out, despite his protestations about Charlie needing to come with him.
• Later, an almost tearful Nick admits that he’s afraid of who he is without his mom. He thinks having a guy basically kill himself isn’t where they wanted to end up and Madison, despite how angry she is at Mel, takes the point.

• That night, Alicia tells Charlie that there’s a working walkie-talkie in the car and gives her a chance to talk to him. Mel, still badly hurt, can barely speak. Nick, Alicia and Charlie roll out to find him, with Strand’s blessing.
• Naomi finds Madison, brooding about the day’s events. Madison is pleasantly surprised Naomi’s stayed. So is Naomi.
• The search party find Mel and are halfway through rescuing him when they hear something. Nick cuts the headlights and they watch in abject horror as a convoy of trucks, all loaded down with Walkers, drives past, heading for the stadium.
• They call it in. The stadium preps for the convoy but are surprised to see a single van pull up and drive a circle around the walls, dropping liquid as it goes…
• Nick and the others, concealed nearby, debate whether or not the single van is a trap when the convoy arrives. The trucks open up and a massive herd begins walking towards the stadium gates, with Nick and Alicia trapped outside.
• Madison orders the gate opened and they prep to make a run for it. But then a petrol bomb is hurled at the line the first truck took around the parking lot. It bursts into flame. And that’s when they realize the Walkers are all covered in oil…
• Nick and Alicia’s car is swarmed. The gate is opened regardless and Alicia sends her mother what she’s pretty sure is the final message she’ll ever send. Madison steps in front of the open gate, her face lit by flames, and-
• Smash cut to the present. The burning remains of the truck that spread the oil. The SWAT truck pulls up and Naomi begs Al and Morgan to go into the stadium. She tells them Ennis would never have gone as far as the infirmary and neither Morgan or Al, are happy about the thought of what’s waiting for them.
• Al guns the engine, smashes through into the stadium and looks around in abject horror. The stadium swarms. Hundreds of burned Walkers everywhere and they’ve already surrounded the truck…

Review:

The dual timeline approach this season has employed to date has been ambitious and, at times, a little frustrating. This week that annoyance comes in the form of us not knowing if John makes it (Please live, John!) but is more than balanced out by an episode chock full of some really weird, very successful choices.

First off, the original characters are the bad guys now! Kind of! The sight of Alicia, Strand and Luciana shooting at the SWAT truck as it flees is genuinely disturbing. Not just because we’re getting an idea of the horrific events they’ve been through but because they don’t hesitate for a second to shoot at a truck containing a seriously injured man and a CHILD. They want vengeance. And we’re starting to understand why. They’ve lost their home, Nick and it’s heavily implied, Madison as a direct result of Charlie’s actions. The only thing scarier than their actions is the fact that, in their position, none of us could be entirely sure we wouldn’t be shooting at the truck too.

But here’s the thing. We’re not sure Madison’s dead. The show has worked so hard to imply that she is, from last week’s non-reveal to this week’s final shot of her that it would almost be too easy. Madison has been through so much and has clung so tenaciously to the idea of being a good person even when the world is not, that we can’t help but hope she’s, somehow, pulled through. And it looks like we’ll be finding out pretty soon…

This is another good episode of the strongest, and oddest, season of this show yet. We’re heading towards a bunch of big reveals and we can’t wait to find out what they are. Not to mention if, somehow, all the leads manage to end up on the same side anytime soon.

The Good:

• Oh THAT’s what the trucks in the opening credits are! Nice touch!
• Some typically great cinematography this week. We especially liked this reveal on the weaponized Walker herd.

• Likewise the reveal that the Vultures’ flags are numerical listings of how many Walkers they have at that location. That’s NASTY.
• The almost tangible rage among the original characters. We’ve seen characters on these shows lose everything before. We’ve never seen them this murderous about it.
• John’s gunshot coma dreams being of the short time he spent with Naomi. AWWWW.
• Alycia Debnam-Carey is so good this week. The combination of dead facial eyes and seething rage is truly scary.

The Bad:

• Charlie is on pretty thin ice now. She’sstraight up murdered a principle character and, it now emerges, was indirectly responsible for the fall of the Stadium. There is no muffin basket on the face of the Earth that says enough ‘SORRY!’ for that.

Best Quotes:

• ‘I’m his friend.’-OUR FEELINGS, MORGAN
• ‘This story’s almost finished! Doesn’t have to be that way for John!’
• ‘Why’d you save me?’
  ‘Because this has to stop, some place.’
• ‘You wanna protect them? You’re gonna have to disappoint them.’
• ‘You’re trying to be the type of people that are EXTINCT!’
• ‘No one’s gone till they’re gone.’
• ‘I felt found here.’
• ‘Does Madison know you’re leaving?’
  ‘What do you think?’
• ‘I can sleep anywhere. But if you try to remove the showers, I WILL chain myself to the pipes.’

Review by Alasdair Stuart

Read all of our Fear Walking Dead reviews