In the Fear the Walking Dead recap, Madison is determined to get her family back while Alicia and Travis plot a way to escape….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
As it was explained in the opening few episodes of Fear the Walking Dead that when the world starts to fall apart, it falls apart in a hurry.
There wouldn’t be a slow transition from normalcy to madness if the apocalypse truly began and so it should be any surprise that just weeks after Los Angeles was burned to the ground by the United States government, that factions are already forming to find a way to survive in this new, chaotic world.
As Travis, Madison and the other survivors attempted to make their way to Mexico to find a safe harbor in the storm, they encountered one of these groups, who weren’t looking to make friends or exchange supplies. They were there to take what they wanted — by any means necessary.
And in the case of the Abigail, they wanted the boat and particularly a couple of survivors from the inside while the rest of them were supposed to be casualties of war. It was clear why Alicia was so important to the pirates looking to take over the boat because she made a connection with a boy named Jack, who was part of the scavenging crew that hijacked her family. But why was Travis so important? Was it because he could serve as a makeshift mechanic?
As it turns out, Travis was taken because he wronged somebody during the apocalypse and they wanted revenge.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of Fear the Walking Dead titled “Captive”….
Course of Action
With the arrival of Strand’s friend Luis, who helped overthrow Reed and his fellow pirates from taking the Abigail, Madison wants to take a direct course back to his base of operations to find her daughter and future husband. Downstairs in the hold, Salazar tends to Reed’s injuries after he was impaled last week during the siege on the boat.
While Salazar cleans up the wound, Reed continues to explain in graphic detail how he and his brother Conner are both quite dangerous and they won’t forget this little mutiny that left him with a gigantic piece of metal shoved through his abdomen. Salazar doesn’t blink and reminds Reed that the truly scary men in the world don’t need to remind you how scary they really are.
The entire time this is happening, Chris is watching is stunned silence because he’s still feeling regret over not pulling the trigger when Reed and his crew pulled up on the Abigail in the first place. He believes if he would have just shot first and asked questions later, Travis and Alicia would still be on board and the entire crew would be on their way to Mexico.
Chris offers to stand guard over Reed, but he just can’t deal with the reality that none of this is actually his fault and it shouldn’t be his responsibility to decide whether someone lives or someone dies. Of course, Chris’ rapidly deteriorating sense of right and wrong eventually leads him down a very destructive and dangerous path.
Everybody Has a Job
Back on Conner’s boat, he’s cooking a steak and a salad for Alicia as a “welcome” to the family meal while briefly explaining the rules and regulations of this crew. It turns out, Alicia is meant to have a job — like everybody else on board — and Jack has vouched for her to become part of the team.
It seems Alicia will be the person to keep an eye on the radar to find more boats for Conner and his men to ransack in the middle of the ocean. Once she spots the boats on the radar, Alicia will make contact with them just like she did with Jack a few days back. Eventually, Conner and the others will rendezvous with the vessels and take them over — peacefully or not so peacefully.
Alicia is struggling with this new job, not only because she’s quietly plotting her escape the entire time, but also because she believes talking to Jack is exactly what got her family into this trouble in the first place. If not for her rambling away to some stranger over the radio, maybe Conner and his crew never would have discovered the Abigail.
As it turns out — Alicia actually had nothing to do with it.
Downstairs in the lockup, Travis is attempting to figure a way out when he comes face to face with the person who gave up the position on the Abigail and gave Conner’s crew all the details they needed to board the ship.
It’s Alex from Flight 462.
When Conner’s men found her floating in a raft all by herself after she was forced to toss the boy she rescued from the plane crash into the ocean after a mercy killing to save him from an even more painful death, she was rescued under the condition that she could provide them with something useful.
What Alex provided them was the location of the Abigail.
Half a Day
Madison is determined to rescue Travis and Alicia before the entire crew heads for Mexico. Luis is about to lose his mind because he knows the window to get into Baha is closing, not to mention he’s supposed to pay for entry and there’s only enough money for two people — him and Strand.
Strand assures Luis that he’ll find a way to get them all into Mexico and he gives Madison half a day to rescue Travis and Alicia as payback for pulling him out of the water after Conner’s men left him for dead.
Madison finds the harbor where Conner is stationed and she makes the call over the radio to inform them that their crew is dead, all except Reed, and if they want him back alive they need to exchange him for Travis and Alicia. Conner agrees and Madison decides she will drive with the boat over to the rendezvous to make the trade.
Nick emphatically asks his mother to let him go, but she won’t have it. Madison believes Nick along with Chris and Alicia are nothing more than children and they shouldn’t be asked to handle situations such as this. Of course, Salazar reminds her that this isn’t the same world these kids lived in a few months ago and they are now going to have to grow up fast.
For now, Madison is staying in control and ready to make the exchange until she hears a gunshot from down below.
Chris shot Reed in the face.
He says Reed was about to turn and he had to shoot him, but Ofelia and Nick quickly realize that their hostage was still very much alive when Chris decided to kill him. That’s a problem they’re going to have to deal with down the road, but right now there’s an even bigger issue — Reed is dead and his brother still has Alicia and Travis.
The Exchange
Salazar comes up with a brilliant plan after it turns out Reed actually did turn into a zombie after Chris shot him. Salazar decides to bind his hands and put a bag over his head so they can still make the exchange and until that hood is removed, no one will know that Reed is already dead.
Madison puts Reed into the boat with her and she begins towards the shipyard where Conner and his men are hold up.
Inside the main freighter, Alicia has already plotted her escape and she ends up locking the pregnant girl in the cage after discovering that Travis was already gone. She runs up to the main deck where she runs into Jack again. He’s bummed because the two of them had planned to escape together but after Alicia realized that his crew had no intention of leaving the rest of her family alive despite a promise Jack and Conner made to her, she could no longer trust him.
Meanwhile down on the deck, Madison makes the exchange and she works quickly to get Travis free as Conner pulls the hood off his brother’s head and realizes that he’s already dead. Before Conner can react, Reed takes a big bite of him and then another of his henchman nearby. Travis and Madison fight off the other two members of Conner’s crew and Alicia jumps into the water to rejoin them on the raft headed back to the Abigail.
And standing back on the boat is poor Jack, who looks down with the saddest puppy dog eyes realizing that Alicia was playing him the entire time. Now, Travis, Madison and Alicia are all reunited at the boat but they certainly aren’t out of danger.
Now the entire crew will trust in Strand and Luis to get them to Mexico, get them across the border and do it all with everybody making it out alive.
Fear the Walking Dead returns next Sunday night at 9pm ET on AMC but you can take a look a sneak preview below:
