In the Fear the Walking Dead recap for the season 2 premiere, Strand takes Travis, Madison and their family onto his boat but threats lie just around the corner — even at sea…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
If there’s one lesson that’s been taught over and over again on The Walking Dead through the past six seasons it’s that humans are just as bit of a threat as the dead people who refused to stay dead.
For all the dangers that hordes of flesh eating zombies present to the world, the ravenous nature of humanity sometimes trumps all of that and just days into the apocalypse, the Los Angeles survivors are already finding that out the hard way.
Following a debut season that documented the outbreak of the virus that caused the dead to rise again, Fear the Walking Dead picks up just moments after we last left the survivors as they made it to a beach house alongside their new friend Strand, who promised them safety courtesy of his yacht sitting out in the water, far away from the shores that would soon be burnt to the ground.
If you remember from a season ago, the military enacted Operation: Cobalt, which mean the city was about to be bombarded from the sky to hopefully slow the spread of the disease as the dead began to out number the living. Certainly we know from the main series that these efforts fail miserably, but the government is trying anything to save the world.
Instead, they just destroy more of it.
To make matters worse, Chris is clinging onto his mother’s dead body rather than helping his family pack for transportation to the Abigail where they will hopefully find safe passage out of LA.
Got all that?
With that said, let’s recap the season 2 premiere of Fear the Walking Dead titled “Monster”…
Those Who Survive
Just getting to Strand’s boat is no easy feat as Travis and Madison are forced to fight off a growing group of zombies making it to the beach looking for live flesh to devour. Not only are Travis and Madison ill prepared to deal with this tragedy — one of them is a guidance counselor, the other an English teacher — but they are also massively ill equipped. So Travis eventually kills a walker with a stick while Madison gets the job done with a rock.
It’s a long way from crossbows and a .357 magnum.
Finally, Travis and Madison gather up Chris and his mother’s body to get on board the life boat to make it to the Abigail.
Once on board it’s clear that there are three ways to do things here — the right way, the wrong way and the way Strand wants you to do it. That philosophy comes into play immediately when Madison and the others spot a raft full of people floating towards them, begging for help. Madison and Alicia want to stop and offer assistance, but Strand makes it clear that they aren’t there to lend a helping hand. The more unknown people who make it onto the boat, lowers everybody’s chances of survival.
Even Travis, who was all about helping his neighbors when the zombie apocalypse first started, has realized that his family might be better off without inviting anybody else aboard.
As they pass the boat full of survivors struggling to stay afloat in the water, Travis, Madison and the others begin to realize that this is the way of the world now.
It’s every man for himself.
Jack in the Box
In an attempt to find safe haven as Strand points the boat towards San Diego, where he hopes to find military defense already in place to provide some safety, Travis tells Alicia to listen to the radio for any signs of life or rescue. Instead of looking for help, Alicia ends up connecting to a voice on the other end attached to someone called ‘Jack’, who strikes up a conversation after broadcasting a David Bowie song over the airwaves.
Alicia and ‘Jack’ share a long talk while he describes the trouble he’s in right now as his boat starts taking on water and supplies are running short. Of course Alicia fails to realize amidst this starry eyed conversation with her mystery man on the other end of the radio that she’s actually being milked for information — including directions to the Abigail and a complete run down of all the perks that make up this luxury yacht.
When Strand finds out, he’s livid because he knows that all Alicia did by talking to her radio crush was possibly give some pirates the chance to intercept them and take over the Abigail. So he lays out the rules one final time — this is Strand’s boat, this is Strand’s boat and oh yeah, this is Strand’s goddamn boat.
And they better remember that!
While Alicia is quietly setting her family up for disaster, Chris is still mourning his mother down in one of the bedrooms.
Rather than burying the body back in LA or dropping her into the sea, Chris wanted to bring his mother with them until he was truly ready to let her go. To make matters worse, Chris lashes out at Travis when he finds out that it was his father who put the final bullet into his mother’s head. Madison attempts to console Chris while sharing with him the hard truths of this new world — if you get bitten, you will turn and if you turn, you need to die. Madison promises to do that same thing to anybody in her family and all Travis did was the humane thing to put Liza out of her misery before turning into a zombie.
Chris begins to wake up from his emotional funk as he finally dumps Liza’s body into the ocean, but his constant state of grief and sorry might be the thing that sinks the Abigail before she ever even gets a chance to save everybody.
Swimming with Sharks
As Strand continues to guide the boat towards San Diego, Daniel Salazar does some fishing while constantly keeping an eye on the group’s new host. Salazar can’t be certain, but there’s something not quite right about Strand and he’s determined to find out what it is or at least be ready for whatever when it finally happens.
Following the makeshift funeral for Liza, the rest of the survivors sit down for an eel dinner — courtesy of Daniel’s fishing — but before anyone can take a bit, they all hear a splash as if somebody has fallen overboard. The group rushes to the surface where Nick discovers that it was Chris who jumped into the water.
Nick follows him in but quickly finds out that Chris wasn’t running away and he wasn’t trying to commit suicide — he was just going for a swim. Nick joins him floating around the bluest parts of the Pacific until something strange happens — he runs into a walker floating in the water just trying to take a bite.
In the distance, Travis and the others spot a boat that’s been capsized after being destroyed in a hail of gunfire. The zombies in the water aren’t there by accident — somebody shot up the boat and left everybody there for dead. And now they are undead.
Travis heads out on the rescue boat to pull Chris and Nick from the water, but not before his stepson decides to do a little exploring in the other boat. Nick believes he heard voices coming from inside the capsized boat and he tries to search and rescue, but instead finds a walker inside trying to dine on him. Nick escapes after grabbing the yacht logs from the destroyed vessel before making it back to Travis in the speed boat.
Travis, Chris and Nick rush back to the Abigail because things are about to go from bad to worse.
It seems Strand picked up another vehicle on his radar and they are moving with great haste directly towards his vessel. Are these the people who just destroyed this other boat and now they are coming back for more? Or could this be ‘Jack’, who not only knows where the Abigail is located but knows exactly what’s on board? Or could they be one and the same?
Either way, trouble is on the way and it will be there soon enough.
Fear the Walking Dead returns next Sunday night at 9pm ET with a brand new episode on AMC but take a look at the sneak peek below:
