The first half of Fear the Walking Dead Season four ended with the shocking death of Madison Clark (Kim Dickens). The mid-season premiere picks up about a month later. Has everyone healed their wounds? More than likely. Have they healed their hearts? Probably not. Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), Nick (Frank Dillane), Victor (Colman Domingo), and Luciana (Danay Garcia) got their revenge on the Vultures, except for Charlie (Alexa Nisenson). Morgan Jones (Lennie James) came from Virginia, running away from people, and ended up in the middle of the conflict. He met John Dorie (Garret Dillahunt) and Althea…aka Al (Maggie Grace) who also got involved. They ended up saving Charlie from death and a woman known to John as Laura and to Alicia as Naomi. Her real name is June (Jenna Elfman). Alicia was so sure that June had something to do with the events that caused Madison’s death. So after all was said and done, where does the group go from here?
Recap the First Half of FEAR THE WALKING DEAD Season Four Here!
Life Goes On
We find the group living in separate abodes, close in proximity. Morgan has been killing walkers and taking what he finds in bags and pockets. He has been staying in the back of a truck with a tarp covering while his leg heals. He assesses his bounty that consists of canned goods, peanut butter protein bars, and a radio. Morgan uses the radio to contact Al. He reminds her about his stories about Virginia. Al is most interested in the story about the King and his tiger. Morgan says she can find out that story for herself. He asks her to drive him back to Virginia.
John, June, and Charlie are living on a bus that is parked on a bridge. There is a gate to keep out the walkers. June is cleaning fish, while Charlie sits and reads. Morgan visits to let them know that he’s leaving. He asks them to go with him. John says he’s not ready to travel and questions is Morgan’s leg is healed well enough. Morgan says he’s fine. John says he has plans to return to his cabin with June and Charlie. He thanks Morgan for the invite, but declines. He invites Morgan to dinner and Morgan accepts, but first he has to make one more trip.
Morgan goes to a ranch where Strand, Luciana, and Alicia are staying. A walker approaches Morgan. Someone shoots the walker in the shoulder. It’s Strand. He’s drunk and apologizes for his aim being off. Stand and Morgan find Luciana playing music really loud. Morgan stops the music to talk to ask them to go with him to Virginia. Both of them are reluctant to leave. Luciana says there’s nothing for her out there and they wish him safe travels. Morgan asks for Alicia and neither are really sure where she is. Luciana says she saw her by the garden the week before.
Morgan heads to the greenhouse, but Alicia is not there. Morgan finds a stack of notes, asking for help. He finds Alicia banging a metal fence to attract walkers. Morgan tries to talk to her but she’s focused on killing the walkers. He asks her about the notes, thinking she wrote them. She says she found the notes tacked onto the walkers. Alicia thinks she can save whoever wrote the notes, but Morgan questions if that person is still alive or not.
Morgan tells her that he’s leaving and he thinks it would be good for her to go with him. He thinks Alicia would be a good addition to the community he came from. Alicia says she’s staying because someone there needs her help. Morgan is afraid that she’s going to get hurt. Alicia doesn’t listen, instead focusing on the fence as more walkers approach.
Breach
June changes John’s bandages and asks if he really intends to go back to the cabin. She asks if he thinks the cabin is still there. John says he locked the door before leaving. As they are awkwardly talking, a walker comes out of the river and heads straight for Charlie. Charlie doesn’t call for help, she just starts backing away from it. Althea arrives in time to stop the walker from reaching Charlie and kills it.
June takes Charlie back inside the bus and asks her what happened. Charlie isn’t talking, so June tells her that when she’s ready, June is there to listen. John talks to Al about finding out where the walker came from. June says he can’t go because he’s still recovering. Al volunteers to go with June.
Strand wakes up from a drunken nap and gets up to close a door. There’s blood on the door so Strand looks around. A walker makes his way to toward the music room where Luciana is still in. The music is up so loud that Luciana can’t hear Strand fighting off the walker and killing it. Strand kicks the turntable, stopping the music. He tells Luciana that it’s time to find the breach in the fence.
Strand and Luciana put up a quick fix on the fence. Luciana asks what they are doing there. Strand says they are enjoying the bounty of their discovery. Luciana questions what is left to fight for. Strand says he has thought the same thing, but he’s going to enjoy himself while he’s asking.
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Help Yourself
Alicia goes to Morgan’s truck to tell him that she figured out where the notes are coming from. The notes are tacked on with a bolt that has the initials AGL engraved on them. There is a lumber yard called AGL just up the road and she’s going to investigate. She asks Morgan to go with her. As they leave, the wind starts to pick up.
Morgan and Alicia make their way to the lumberyard. Morgan takes the opportunity to talk about why he left Virginia. He says he ran away from his people. He didn’t leave a note or anything. Alicia questions if the community is still there, but Morgan knows it is. He says a friend told him that he would come back because he needs people. Morgan wanted to prove him wrong. Now he wants to get back so he can look him in the eye to tell him that he’s right. Morgan is telling Alicia because he doesn’t want her to find out the hard way. A walker approaches with a note attached. Alicia kills it, takes the note, and walks in the direction from where it came.
Al and June drive up to a tree in the road. They get out to investigate and find a box of supplies by the tree. The lid of the box says “Take what you need, Leave what you don’t. See you further along the road.” Neither Al nor June have seen anything like this, so Al decides she needs to document it.
As Al gets her camera, June asks what John said about her in his interview. Al replies that no one talked about June. John talked about Laura. Alicia’s group talked about Naomi, but no one talked about June. Al asks if June wants to do an interview, but June doesn’t answer. Al tells her to think about it.
Save Yourself
Alicia and Morgan get to the AGL Lumber Yard. Morgan tries to tell her to be careful, but she says there’s no time. They find a warehouse with a handful of walkers surrounding a door. Whoever sent the notes is trapped behind that door. Alicia kills a walker but Morgan stops her from going after the rest. The rest of the walkers turn toward Morgan and Alicia. Alicia says she is going to save that person, and Morgan says he will help her. They lead the group of walkers outside. Alicia crushes the group with a large bale of lumber. They go back into the warehouse.When Alicia opens the door, the guy inside is already dead.
Morgan kills the trapped walker and says he’s been like that for days. There’s nothing Alicia could have done to save him. Alicia says her mom would have saved him. She reflects on how much time she spent out there with Nick, Strand and Luciana, looking for the vultures. She was good at that, just like Madison. Morgan reminds her that Madison changed and Alicia can to. Alicia says she has a lot to make up for. Morgan says he does too.Morgan says this person gave Alicia a reason to run. Strand and Luciana need her. She can save them by being there for them. Alicia turns things around on him saying he could be there for them too. She asks why he’s leaving, but walks away before he answers.
Forgive Yourself
John creates the game Scrabble out of old cereal boxes. He asks Charlie to play with him, but she doesn’t have to talk if she doesn’t want to. As they get set up, John tells her that he stopped talking for a while because he was ashamed of something he did. He said he let what he did eat away at him. He thought maybe there wasn’t anything left in him worth keeping. Then he found someone to talk to and she brought him back to the world. He forgave himself. A walker comes out of the river, so John leaves to kill it. While he’s gone, Charlie gathers her books and leaves the bus.
Strand is draggin the walker intruder out of the house when John shows up. He asks Strand to help him find Charlie. Strand refuses and says no one there will help because she killed Nick. John reminds him that they shot him, so they owe him. And everyone else is gone. He needs help because he’s still healing. Strand tells him he has to drive because Strand has been drinking a lot.
Al videotapes the river full of walkers. She thinks they might be getting in further upstream. June asks Al to turn off the camera so she can talk to her. She doesn’t want John to hear what she has to say. Al turns off the camera. June says John fell in love with Laura, but she’s not Laura. She a woman who gets scared and runs away. She doesn’t’ want to go back to the cabin because she doesn’t want John to know who she really is. June is afraid that John will not realize that she’s not Laura and she never was.
Al tells her that she is helping John by nursing him back to health. That’s who she is right now. Yesterday doesn’t matter. Today is today. She laughs saying she sounds like her mom. They hear birds chirping nearby and see a flock of birds flying away. June says the walkers are not from a bridge that is out. She says they need to get to the bus ASAP.
Walker Twister
It starts to rain as John and Strand look for Charlie. Alicia and Morgan make their way back to the ranch. The wind is really strong, so Morgan suggest they find a safe place, but Alicia keeps walking, saying she’s fine on her own. Morgan lets her go.
Luciana hears the front door open and thinks Strand is home. No one answers her so she goes to investigate. She sees Charlie and runs after her. Charlie grabs her things at the front door when Luciana grabs her. Charlie gets away by getting out of her jacket. Luciana yells at her, saying she’s done enough damage already. She goes back inside and finds the book, “The Littlest Prince.” Luciana turns around and runs out the door after Charlie.
June calls John on the radio to warn him about the storm. The signal goes out as the wind picks up around Al’s van. Al stops the van saying she can’t drive in high winds. They hear multiple things hit the van. They look outside and see walkers flying across. Al drove into a tornado.
Thoughts
A fresh start to an already interesting story. Although, it will be different without Kim Dickens and Frank Dillane. Alycia Debnam-Carey showed a lot of growth in the first half of the season. I have a feeling she will elevate Alicia Clark even further.
I like that Morgan wants to go home, but it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to actually go through with it. It was awesome to see him in the first half, but he didn’t do a whole lot but observe. Morgan needs to go through another transformation after leaving behind the only community he’s ever known.
Healing takes time. And these people need to heal.
News Editor, Senior Contributor, and Press Editor. Coordinate breaking news, trailers and press releases. I also contribute reviews, recaps and interviews. Creator of the Indigenerd Wire, a column dedicated to the Indigenous creatives in pop culture.
GGA's resident Indigenerd, a little bit rez, a little bit classy...with a love for all things Star Wars, zombies, science fiction, and Indigenous. My ultimate goal is to start my own podcast.
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