In the Fear the Walking Dead season finale, Daniel had learned the location of the complex where the infected are taken, and usually cremated (that was the plan, anyway). Daniel gets this information by threatening and torturing a soldier who was brought to him by his daughter. Daniel is a former Central American death-squad member. Did you know that? I didn’t. Neither did his daughter. She was only using the poor soldier to get medication for her mother and he gets strapped to a chair. There is friction here as Daniel and Travis argue over what to do with the soldier.
Always the good guy, Travis wants to take him with them. Death squad Daniel wants to execute him. Travis wins out. Griselda, in her last moments, reveals that she did know about her husband’s past life.
They’re military is also rounding up potential troublemakers—like a certain heroin addicted youngster. Speaking of Nicky, while being held he makes friends with a mysterious, rich, sociopath. What is it with these types that they manage to keep themselves immaculate even when neck deep in literal crap?
His use for Nick isn’t really clear to me right now, but there is a definite, feral repartee between them. Predator and potential protégé. The only clue he gives is “Abagail.”
The plan is for Daniel to open the gates to the cordoning yard where the walkers are kept, occupying the military while others (sans Alicia and Chris, who go to the basement garage to wait for the rest) search for their loved ones. The first part of the plan goes almost too well. Not so much the second part, which succeeds mainly due to luck and a lot of excellent brain smashing. By the way, there’s a cool scene (if you’re into this kind of thing) where an infected soldier decides to end it all by running face-first in a spinning helicopter tail rotor.
The military is presented as brave and honorable as they try to hold off the horde to the last man. It was a nice change from their earlier, far more chilling, presentation. The exemption would be three soldiers who confront the teens in the basement garage and order them to hand over the keys to their SUV. Being big and armed, they have little trouble getting the keys.
In the garage, they are confronted by Andy, who looks like he is going to shoot Daniel, but shoots Ophelia instead. This sets of Travis, who delivers a massive, red-assed beat down on Andy. They leave, but not before walking through a concentration camp-like scene featuring mounds of human cremation ashes, ready to be bulldozed into mass graves. Strand (these guys always seem to have one name) convinces them to head west, to the coast. He has a large house there and “Abagail,” who is a mega yacht big enough to put many an oil sheik to shame. It’s the only scene where his face reflects any emotion.
So the ending is this, there’s a mob of “infected,” a desperate escape by car, and they leave on a rich jerk’s boat. Wait…wasn’t that the end of the remake of Dawn on the Dead? And Strands statement that to survive in a mad world, one must embrace the madness (kind of like the ‘Get Down With the Sickness’ sequence from Dawn of the Dead).
I don’t see them being troubled much by the infected while on a boat. But I’ve been around boats for years. Something is ALWAYS breaking down. They’re going to need a mechanic trained on 2000-horse power diesels plus provisions. Whatever threats announce themselves are going to come in the form of either each other or from human pirates. I doubt the military will bother them when their chief threat is on land. Plus Liza is the only one with any apparent medical training (more on that later).
Finally, it turns out that Liza is infected. She has a wound she discovered as they were en route. Being altruistic in nature, she elects to take her own life, rather than face being a threat to the others. She begs Madison to do it, but Travis shows up. After an emotional scene, he chooses to do it himself.
I’m not how I feel about the ending, and I’m somewhat sad by Liza’s death. She appealed to me to be the only one motivated by genuine altruism, which is a desirable trait when in groups, but can be detrimental in individuals trying to survive. She also seems to be the only one that understands or acknowledges what is happening. Heretofore, they’ve referring to them as the “infected,” like they have some sickness that can be cured. She the first one to openly acknowledge that people are dying and coming back.
