Fear The Walking Dead, Mother: Things To Note
By Liam O'Leary
1) This episode’s “Previously” recap focuses on Morgan giving Riley the key at the end of “In Dreams,” Alicia fighting with Ed to save Dakota in the midseason finale, “Damage From The Inside,” and Teddy’s conversation with Alicia at the end of “The Holding.”
2) This episode begins with a flashback to Teddy on death row as the outbreak begins. This is the first time we’ve seen a flashback to the outbreak (As well as only the second flashback for a villain at the outbreak) since we saw Martha’s backstory in season four’s “MM 54”.
3) At the beginning of Teddy’s flashback, we’re seeing him writing in a journal. The part of his writings which aren’t cut off by his hand reads: “Death is the end. We must return our bodies to the soil. Resurrect the natural order of the planets, the universe. The end will be a beginning. The End Is The Beginning.”
4) If you notice Teddy writing, he’s left-handed. Supposedly, left-handed people are more likely to be geniuses. They’re also, supposedly, more likely to suffer from psychosis. If this is true, it might explain Teddy’s behavior a bit.
5) While Teddy writes, we hear a news report in the background recounting how ICUs across the U.S. are reaching capacity, morgues are filling up at alarming rates, and that the government was working to put down the pandemic. How long, exactly, was this before the events we saw in Los Angeles in the first season of Fear The Walking Dead? With the news mentioning attacks in hospitals by “patients no longer in control of their faculties” and sick people avoiding medical care because of such incidents, this seems slightly incongruous with what we saw at the beginning of the series, where there obviously were people getting sick, but…not nearly to the capacity suggested here.
6) When George is taken to the execution chamber, he’s accompanied by three guards (One of them being Hayes, who marvels at Teddy’s adherence to his philosophy before insulting him), a priest, and, presumably, the warden. Unfortunately, while we see George, Hayes, and the other two guards return as walkers, we don’t learn the fate of either the priest or the warden.