RECAP: ‘Fear The Walking Dead’ The Survivors Face Their Greatest Test [Season 2 Mid-Season Finale]

If you haven’t guessed it, the teaser about Ofelia turning was only Daniel’s dream. The man who cares for nothing is grateful to God that his daughter is safe, while an ungrateful Celia is livid at Victor for not letting Thomas turn. She has thrown the entire survivor group out. She wants them gone by sunrise. I am guessing it won’t be a loss since everything else will most likely be gone by then. Travis, stepfather extraordinaire, is on his own saving Chris, since Alicia refuses to help him look for his missing son. She reminds him that Chris was in the room with her and Maddie when (Victor’s) shot rang out. Travis runs out into the dark of night, across the fields, to try to find his son. Formula for disaster but I love the love!  By morning, Daniel is creating a shiv for himself as he watches pigs being sacrificed to the dead. Celia angrily watches Victor stand over a grave being dug, the one in which only Thomas will be buried – if Strand is lucky.  

Travis is now beyond the estate walls while looking for Chris. He finds a body, a man who may have committed suicide using his own knife, pushing through the skull to avoid turning. Maddie is at the ranch telling her children to load up on supplies before they go. Alicia is refusing to leave and Nick thinks he can talk Celia into letting them stay. While they are arguing about whether Travis is coming back, he meets a man who appears to be defending his home. The man helps Travis, whose foot is badly cut along the bottom and bleeding. Since Travis does not speak Spanish, they have a hard time communicating, but it’s clear that the man has seen enough to be worried about the injury.

Bloodied Nick decides to show the group his walker whispering skills by leading walker-Luis back to the estate. Celia is thrilled and thinks Nick is touched by some blessed insight since he is not afraid of them. She wants him to stay but he won’t without his family.  She grants his wish to let his family stay but makes him responsible for them.  Victor must go, he never belonged – Celia says.  She believes that they are all in a new phase of life – life eternal (unless someone blows open your dome, and then it’s not so eternal). Outside, Daniel is flipping out and doesn’t want Thomas buried in the ground, believing it to be unholy and infected. He thinks the dead hate the living because they come back as something other than what they were, the living are also different and the dead hate the living for it. He  keeps trying to convince Victor that Thomas will come back for him if he buries him. Victor wishes it was true, or that he could join Thomas. On the other side of the compound, Maddie thinks Nick is different, but he tells her that he was different before it all happened. They quibble over whether the walkers are dead, infected, whatever.  She can’t figure out what his fascination is.  He thinks she’s talking about him as if he is using, again, and he can’t talk to her the way she “always is.” He feels that she couldn’t possibly understand the fact that Celia wanted her son back. Nick is feeling indestructible and believes that he can do anything.  He offers to bring Travis back for her – as if he thinks that is all she really wants anyway.

Daniel is devolving and tells Ofelia that her mother is outside the gate waiting for them. They have to leave that evil place. Her attempts to free herself from his grasp draws attention. When the workers stop him from dragging her off, he cuts one of them on the face and is wrestled to the ground. At the gravesite, Victor tells Maddie that constantly filling Nick with doubt left him vulnerable and looking for something to cling to. Now Celia has her hooks into him. He tells her he is going back to the boat and offers to take her with him, but she won’t go without Travis. She wishes there was something she could do. He tells her not to get sentimental and throw around vague terms like “friends.” They had a mutually beneficial relationship. At the cabin, it turns out that the man who helped Travis does speak English. Chris is in the next room with his son and has threatened to hurt the boy if Travis doesn’t leave. When he barges into the adjoining room, an angry Chris holds a gun on him and asks why he won’t just let him go. At the funeral, Celia makes Thomas’ passing about her and even tries to force Victor out before he can finish burying his beloved.  He refuses to go until the burial is done.

Everybody has the feels. Alicia and Maddie are feeling upset about about Victor. Chris is upset about being viewed as a monster. He tries cutting Travis to break free of him. He thinks he is no good, but Travis realizes he should have tried to help his son, sooner. Daniel is back to himself, feeling angry. Celia, feeling righteous, picks it up as hatred. I guess being tied to a chair in a dark wine processing plant does that to a person. He hears Griselda’s voice as he sits fighting against Celia’s rantings. Celia tells him he is dying, asking him if he can feel it. She thinks he should confess and let go of his torment while he still has words. Bloody whisperer Nick shows up as Travis is sitting, waiting for Chris to gather his things from the stranger’s home. He refuses to go back, despite hearing that Maddie is hurting and needs him. Chris needs him, too, so he tells Nick to tell everyone that he never found either of them. I finally love Travis! Maddie and Celia speak again. She is adamant that Victor has killed “her son,” both of her sons, and must go. She knows that Maddie thinks she is filling Nick’s head with nonsense, but his insight into the “changed ones” makes him special. Maddie will have to accept them as Nick does. Celia believes Nick will ultimately be forced to chose between his family and the ones his family can’t understand. Maddie says she wants to understand and lets Celia lead her to the walker cages.

At the winery, ghost Griselda is as tough in death as she was in life -challenging Daniel to protect their daughter.  She reminds him that she carried the sins he shared with her and he never bothered burying her. He begs for mercy. He begins reliving the horror that consumes, him, being a child taking a life for the first time. He cries for his first victim but she reminds him that he was the first victim. Will we learn that he killed his father, at some point? At the walker cage, Celia waxes poetic about protecting her child (as she watches Luis feed)  She asks Maddie what she wouldn’t do for her children. “Nothing” is the answer. Maddie has locked her in the cage. Celia accepts her fate.  

In the winery, the man whose face Daniel sliced must be extra stupid. He loosens Daniel’s hand just enough for him to feed himself. Of course, he drops the spoon, head butts the guy, cracks the chair over the floor, frees himself and then runs off. Daniel then pours gasoline in the walker cage, believing he is seeing the walkers’ human faces at the end, including Griselda’s (Celia’s?), as she reaches out to him just as he sets the place on fire. Bloodied Nick is horrified at what he sees as he walks up. Strand, ever the hero, was forced to leave just shortly before and now drives up in the pick up he used to bring them to the estate. Maddie, Alicia, and Ofelia join him, believing Daniel is dead. Nick gives Travis’ message and then refuses to join them because he believes Celia was right, they destroy everything.

S2, midseason finale, feels very much like #TWD’s Season 2 Finale, Beside the Dying Fire. I think the show can now be considered #TWD: Los Angeles, and I have no problem with that.

 

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