'Fear the Walking Dead' Recap: 'Wrath' & 'North'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

It's been quite the interesting sophomore season for Fear the Walking Dead. At times the show has been outright brilliant, giving us powerful and stunning episodes that leave you thinking and leave our characters in new and exciting places development wise, and at other times, its youth still shows through with episodes here and there that left us scratching our head.  

But for the season finale, the show decided it was high time to take a few risks story wise, taking a couple of our characters to some supremely dark places and finally allowing for our characters to grow up and embrace the world they now inhabit and well...this decision was a successful and effective one to say the last because 'Wrath' and 'North' were a breathtaking pair of episodes that revolved around Travis' fall from grace, and redemption for both Travis and Nick.  

The redemption was of course far more evident for Nick, who really has gone on quite the incredible journey this season, and oddly enough, his decision to separate from his family turned out to be a wise one despite the fact that so many of us decried it originally. By being out on his own, and off the drugs and finding a place to call his own without anyone watching over his shoulder...Nick grew up. He found love in Luciana, he found a role to help keep the community going and risked his own neck for the greater good by defying Alejandro and delivering the drugs to keep the colonia filled with water and food for the people that had taken him in. Granted, this turned out to be a waste of time once Marco and his gang revealed they knew the colonia's exact location, but that still didn't deter Nick from trying to save lives.

He continued to stand up to Alejandro, making the focus about the people and not faith or an agenda and well...his boldness paid off in spades. He finally convinced Alejandro to let him lead people away from the colonia, giving them a destination when he saw a helicopter landing across the border, and he even put together a bold plan to deal with the gang so they weren't pursued or harmed. That plan demonstrated the darkness that Nick still exhibits since he basically set a trap for those men to be cornered and devoured by the dead, effectively giving the them the complex until their rotting corpses drop, but the good outweighs the bad here. Nick has always understood the eye for an eye mentality and knows it applies to this world and while his journey back to the States may not have ended the way he wanted it to, the kid finally did something incredibly noble, and something tells me this is only the beginning of Nick's journey as a crafty leader.

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But the centerpiece of last night's story was Travis' journey, which was a heartbreaking one to say the least. We knew ugly was coming once Brandon and Derek showed up at the hotel sans Chris, and despite Madison's best efforts to keep her husband away from those two boys...fate found a way to intervene and the face to face showdown between Travis and the boys finally came to fruition, and it was absolutely devastating. 

For starters, we learned, eventually, that the boys had an accident with Chris behind the wheel, and rather than deal with Chris' horrific injuries, they put him down as they had so many of their friends and the truth about the fate of his son...was more than Travis could bear, and the fury within that we have only seen once from Travis, during last year's season finale in fact, was unleashed. There was no mercy for Brandon or Derek as Travis beat them within an inch of their lives, tossing them through glass, and stomping on a skull for good measure. It was uncomfortable to see the always straight as an arrow Travis lose his cool...and in the process of dishing out a little street justice for his son, he hurt Oscar and of course, jeopardized his place as a member of the hotel's burgeoning community.  

After all, Madison's edict was no one was to cause any harm to anyone else, or they had to go and that edict was held into place for Travis, with a caveat. Seeing an opportunity to put her family back together, Madison requested his release and sweetened the deal by letting Elena know that she and Alicia would join Travis on the road. It's a deal that Elena agrees to, but it all goes south once Oscar dies in emergency surgery and in stunning fashion...the Manawa/Clark clan had to fight for their lives to escape the hotel, leaving Strand behind of his own volition in the process and putting them back out into the world, hot on the trail for Nick...and a safe place to stay...

Yet while it was indeed incredible to see Travis finally do what must be done, it was equally stunning to see Madison admit that this was their future, one filled with good moments and ugly ones as they make the tough calls to see another day, and to see Alicia kill as well to save her family...well it just goes to show that next season, this family is not one to be messed with. Yet at the same time, one has to be concerned where Strand's mind is at since he refused to join them, and we do have to wonder if Ofelia will be safe after crossing the border and who exactly was Nick dealing with military wise at the end of the finale. These are all questions to be answered in season three of course, but either way, this was a solid season finale, light years ahead of last year's and if the next season of this show holds to more storytelling like we experienced over the past few weeks, minus silly decisions of course, Fear the Walking Dead may finally come into its own, offering us up another incredible show where the dead walk the earth and mankind struggles to survive. Until next year. 

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