Can there be a community without Madison on Fear The Walking Dead?

The survivors on AMC’s Fear The Walking Dead have tenuous alliances. Without Madison’s influence is community even possible for them?

One of the biggest differences between Fear The Walking Dead and The Walking Dead has always been that the survivors on The Walking Dead bonded together as a cohesive group very early on and have stayed that way no matter what happened to them. Rick Grimes is partially responsible for that, but it also seems like those survivors are just naturally more inclined to come together than the survivors on Fear The Walking Dead.

Strand, Alicia, Luciana, Nick, and Madison have been through a lot together as well. And most of them have been together since almost the beginning of the apocalypse. Yet they are very willing to abandon each other. Strand had a car packed and hidden away, ready to leave the stadium. Nick went off his own multiple times. Alicia did also. Madison was the one who really wanted to create some kind of community space. And through the sheer force of enormous will, she kept everyone close, even after everyone was scattered after the explosion at the dam.

Building the stadium was her dream. She wanted to turn the stadium into a community that would last. And she wanted that so much that she was willing to die for it. But now there doesn’t seem to be any cohesiveness among the survivors at all. In the Fear The Walking Dead midseason premiere “People Like Us” Luciana and Strand are together, but they haven’t seen Alicia in a week and don’t seem to care. Morgan and Althea are on their own. John, June, and Charlie are on their own. Everyone seems to be relatively close in terms of distance but miles away from each other emotionally.

Without Madison’s guiding influence and her determination to keep everyone together is it even possible for these group of disconnected survivors to create the kind of community that Madison wanted for them? It may still be possible, but only if Alicia can overcome her losses and carry on her mother’s legacy.

Alicia Is The Key

Even though Alicia’s really taken the worst losses she is the key to the creation of a community. Alicia is very much her mother’s daughter and she has the same strong will and fierce fighting spirit that Madison had. And that’s what it will take to get the other survivors to band together and develop real loyalty to each other. With Morgan’s help, she may be able to put her grief aside and focus on making Madison’s vision of a safe and thriving community come to life.

But first Alicia is going to have to confront some demons of her own and deal with her feelings about Charlie. In the next episode of Fear The Walking Dead, “Close Your Eyes”, Alicia will have to decide whether her love for her family and her commitment to living in the way that they would want her to live is stronger than her desire to kill Charlie for killing Nick and leading The Vultures to the stadium.