Anger banishment.
Warning: Full spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead's season finale below.
It's been a bumpy ride, but Fear the Walking Dead managed to close out its second season with a surprisingly strong two-parter, "Wrath" and "North," that took us into thrilling and edgy territory with regards to Travis.
I mentioned, in a review from a few chapters back, that Madison's "no violence" decree would most likely come back to haunt her. I just didn't realize that Travis would be the perpetrator - and that he would go so damn far, even accidentally killing Oscar in his fit of murderous rage against Derek and Brandon.
It was a very powerful moment. Yes, Travis began the show as a severely frustrating character, but his storyline with Chris this year -- starting with his decision in the midseason finale to stay with his demented son in order to try and reach out to him -- did wonders for him. Through this prism of Chris and the douchebags he wanted to ride with we got to see how right Travis was in his attempt to be a "good man" in a terrible world. Which then made his brutal killing of those two awful zompocalypse dudebros, which stemmed directly from his guilt over leaving Chris with them, even more shocking. It all worked tremendously.
More often than not, this show zigs when it should zag, to put it plainly, and a lot of the choices the main characters make either don't make sense from a motivation standpoint or they feel too naive given the dire state of the world. Here, the show zigged and it felt right. I was genuinely surprised a couple of times over these two episodes, and not in bad ways.
Travis taking out his rage and killing those two guys was huge, as was Alicia then killing Andrés in order to defend Travis. I never really cared about any of the hotel people as characters, but we at least got a few scenes here and there showing us how Alicia was befriending a few of them. So the moment still played pretty big, especially given how much of a disconnect there's been in the past between her and Travis.
More season finale shocks included Stand staying behind at the hotel, Nick inadvertently leading the entire Tijuana community into the arms of crazed gun-toting mercenaries, and the reveal that Chris was, in fact, dead. I mean, as far as we know. It was all being told to us by Brandon and Derek, but given how fearful they were for their lives, why admit that they murdered Chris? It has to be real.
I really liked how the reveal came about too. Because we knew they were both lying, we just didn't know what they were lying about. Automatically, perhaps, our minds went to "Well, they're lying so Chris is still alive somewhere." As it turned out, they were just lying about how he died. They turned on Chris as soon as he was injured - their infamous M.O. The thing Travis was most frightened about: their gross disloyalty. And so the way the information unfolded really helped sell Travis' eruption into a full-blown murder fit. Because he had just started buying into their first story and coming to terms with Chris' death and then - boom! - the lie was exposed and his guilt took over.
After Madison and her family fled the hotel (taking out the gate on the way out, btw - hah!), the story began to peter out a little bit. I really wanted to see more of Travis dealing with his drastic deed, but the show sped them along to the superstore so that Madison could try and track down Nick. With that in mind too, Carlos' big raid on Alejandro's camp wound up being sort of a nothing event. Alejandro, who'd been exposed as a fraud in the first half of the finale, found a bit of redemption by driving the bus out of the gateway and releasing the walkers, but there was no real conflict. It reminded me of how flat the Governor's (first) raid on the prison felt at the end of The Walking Dead: Season 3.
Though, because the raid felt weak, the predicament Nick and Lucy faced right at the end when they got shot at and beat down by armed thugs came as a nice surprise. Nick wouldn't be the savior here. He'd lead everyone into, possibly, an even more dangerous situation. At least back at the camp they were all prepared to fight back. Here they got ambushed. Of course, you have to think too that just because Nick saw a helicopter didn't automatically mean everyone was going to be safe and saved. Just from Season 1 alone we know how dangerous refugee camps and quarantine zones can be.
I just wanted to bring up a few things at the end here. Firstly, I continue to enjoy the fact that walking around with guts smeared all over one's self is a semi-constant thing on this show. I never understood why Rick and company didn't utilize this tactic more over on the original show, considering how quickly they discovered it could help. Also, there was a particularly gruesome moment in "Wrath" when a walker bit off a guy's nose, a nurse's finger, and then got its eyes gouged in by Nick. This is a gory franchise, but that stood out. All I could think of too was how badly I wanted those specific things happen to Derek and Brandon. Needless to say, I'm happy things turned out the way they did for them.
The Verdict
Fear the Walking Dead finishes its shaky second season on a satisfying note with some nice, sinister surprises and big, brutal moments. Travis' extended beatdown and murder of Derek and Brandon was excellently done, as were the consequences of those actions (which accidentally took an innocent life). Over on Nick's side of the story, we all knew Alejandro would be exposed as a fraud at some point, but everything was handled well and Nick got to save the day (well... until the very end) without having to rush in and physically protect people like an action hero.
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