‘Fear the Walking Dead’ Recap: ‘The Beacon’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Caution: This article contains spoilers for the season seven premiere of ‘Fear the Walking Dead’.
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Believe it or not, the vast majority of horror stories out there have a tendency to hold back true terror from their audiences and there is logic as to why. For horror movies and shows and books, are a form of entertainment, and while they genuinely feature unsettling material through and through, the kind that gives us nightmares and motivates us to engage in a little more scrutiny regarding the shadowy pile of clothes in our bedroom… creative minds know that in order to keep the illusion between fantasy and reality in place… they cannot fully terrorize the reader/viewer. Because to do so runs the risk of chasing off a viewer or a reader by pushing them too far and well… logic or no, this really isn't the right way to handle horror stories.
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Because time and time again, we’ve run into horror stories that remove the filter and go as hard as they can with the scares and when that happens, the story in question is often applauded and celebrated for certain, for being brave and for challenging the viewer in ways no one thought was possible, and it does leave one to wonder why it doesn’t happen more often. But as the genre grows in popularity, more creative minds are eager to push the envelope with this genre, and it just so happens that showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg have decided the time has come to see how far Fear the Walking Dead can go as a franchise when it comes to the terror, and they are planning to accomplish that goal, by plunging us into the darkest and scariest set of stories ever written for this franchise. The kind that will unsettle us and leave us wondering what will be become of beloved and trusted characters, and the setup for such a dark journey… started at the end of season six.

For Teddy’s desire to rain nuclear fire upon the Gulf Coast, set the stage for what Lennie James called in a recent interview with us, a ‘double apocalypse’, where the dead roamed the landscape under the clouds of a nuclear winter and well… our first foray into what this is setting is going to look like, and how scary and disturbing it is going to be, took place last night. For the season seven premiere of this show, ‘The Beacon’, wasted little time in plunging us into a post zombie/nuclear apocalyptic world and it didn’t take long for the viewer to realize, that this is quite the horrifying world to live in. For we spent a lot of time with a man named Will, who was doing his best to get by in the heart of one of the blast zones and well, he was struggling mightily to make it to another day. 

For the nuclear blast left little of anything in its wake, prompting Will to have to scavenge hard to find food and shelter and anything resembling a sense of normalcy, or at least… as normal as one can expect when the dead walk the earth and this sequence of events, mostly told under the guise of silence… was supremely disturbing to say the least. For it basically removed any semblance of hope or safety for the viewer. There was merely death and destruction and the possibility that Will was going to starve in this wasteland or succumb to the greasy clutches of the radioactive living dead, and just when Will (and the audience) were at their lowest, this episode decided to pose some important questions in regard to this kind of devastation. 

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In that, what impact would a double apocalypse have upon the mental health of those who survived the ‘second coming’ of doom? Would they be able to soldier on as they have in the past with the dead surrounding them? Or would the devastation and the unknown of how far ‘The End 2’  reached, warp minds and psyches to a disturbing level? And it explored these queries by having Will come face to face, with a Mister Victor Strand. Who in the time since we last saw him, had been quite the busy little bee. One that got word back to all of the Rangers from Ginny’s failed societal experiment, that there was shelter and safety with Strand and guidance and direction. Provided of course they showed him loyalty and for a time it seemed as though Strand  was desperately trying to control the uncontrollable, making it appear as though this world had finally claimed his mind. 
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But the discovery of the fact that Will spent time in the bunker with Alicia and could potentially bring Strand to her, brought back the hero we saw form over the past couple of years. The one that would risk everything for his friends. And his admission to Will that Alicia was family and someone that was able to tame his darker impulses and bring the light out of him, made it seem as though hope was on the horizon. Since it appeared that Strand was eager to find her again and use her insight and her clarity to find his way back from the dark world surrounding him. Especially when one considers that he even set up an actual lighthouse beacon at his new fortress. But alas, his decision to deal with Will in a shocking and unsavory manner, speaks volumes to the fact that the darkness is strong in Strand and his actions here raise more questions than answers.

All of which of course, relate to the overall theme of this episode and how incredible stresses could potentially transform us. Since we are now left wondering if Strand is indeed inherently slipping toward pure evil and wants his own Negan-like empire to rule over and whether he wants Alicia around to gloat and prove to her that being good is for chumps in this new world and that a Governor’s grip is what it is needed to truly survive the chaos and threats that await everyone in the countryside. Or… if he is really does need his family back to ground him and save him, regardless of the bile and venom he spit out regarding them. But while we wait to see what Strand’s real end game is here and learn more what the double apocalypse does to the human mind, we can celebrate, one of the most devastating and bleakest episodes to ever grace The Walking Dead Universe.

For there are no feel-good moments to be found here. Just wastelands and gory corpses that still hunger for flesh. And this new world is one without hope or reasoning or kindness in the slightest. It is instead, the darkest hour our heroes have ever faced, and that quite frankly, is a stroke of genius. For this kind of unfettered and unrestrained horror is the genre at its finest and this episode does remind that us going this route from a storytelling perspective can achieve wonders. The kind that leaves us texting or chatting with our friends about the shock we are experiencing over what we’ve seen, and it will be quite interesting to see exactly how horrifying things are going to get, in a world where the silent ambition of radiation is as big of a threat as the corpses that walk and hunt what little remains of humanity. Until next time.  

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