Fear the Walking Dead: Charlie’s coming of age story
By Renee Hansen
Fear the Walking Dead’s most recent episode, “Mourning Cloak,” was a great coming of age story featuring Charlie (Alexa Nisenson) and newcomer Ali (Ashton Arbab). The episode has received many negative comments, some of which are deserved, but overall it was a good episode that is building to something more.
Basically, you have two teens, aged 13 and 15, who have grown up in an apocalypse and are at the point in their lives where they are attempting to come into their own. Each is on a mission, trying to prove something to someone while hoping to experience some new things in a world where survival is essential.
Ali is eager to become one of Strand’s rangers and will do whatever is asked of him to accomplish this. Charlie, a master at sneaking into places others can’t, is trying to aid Morgan and the others in taking over the tower.
They head on a mission to retrieve elevator parts to repair the elevator destroyed in the explosion but end up learning more about themselves and each other.
Fear the Walking Dead Mourning Cloak
When they see a group of Stalkers, they hole up in a bowling alley where Charlie confesses she’s never played a game. It is a place that Ali had been familiar with before the outbreak, and he teaches her how to bowl. She wants to learn before they head off on a mission they aren’t sure if either one of them will return from.
This is how kids grow up in the apocalypse. They only have vague, if any, memories of a life before the outbreak, and any experiences they have outside of survival are subpar to what they would have been.
As Charlie turns 13, she learns to bowl, gets her first kiss, and experiences puppy love and loss. Ali is with her for all of these events and is the source of the loss. And now, she may lose her own life.
These stories are why so many people love the series in The Walking Dead universe. The human stories that tell the other side of life in an apocalypse.
So, this might not have been the episode that viewers expected, but it was an episode that needed to be explored that is surely building to something more.
Next. Who plays Charlie on Fear the Walking Dead?. dark
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