Fear the Walking Dead midseason recap, 6 things that sucked

The midseason finale for season 8 of Fear the Walking Dead was a huge disappointment. Morgan (Lennie James) is on another grief-stricken “I see red” experience; until he’s not, the PADRE storyline was worthless, and we will probably never see [Blank & Blank] in the series again. And that post-credit scene, what in the world is going on?

This article contains spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead’s season 8 midseason finale, “All I See Is Red.” 

Understandably, Morgan is experiencing much grief after laying his family to rest in Georgia and being forced to kill Grace’s (Karen David) walker soon after. He has to relive the whole experience again, but this time, he can save his child, Mo (Zoey Merchant).

The idea of the “red jumps” was pretty cool as viewers were to see things from Morgan’s perspective during his times of seeing red. But they were so disjointed that it didn’t show much as he was suddenly in a different place trying to figure out what happened along with the viewers. He just kept shouting, “I don’t remember,” or “What happened?”

Morgan quotes Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), and it seems that this season of Fear TWD will do anything to pull on the heartstrings of Walking Dead fans just for views.

Somehow Shrike (Maya Eshet) loads a crap ton of containers onto a cargo ship, and they had time to go through the massive number of containers looking for coordinates her father had for the expansion. Then they remember they are in the binoculars that cause all of their problems in the first place. And they are still around the neck of her father’s walker.

The high points are that Madison will help the children locate their parents, and Shrike is gone.

Fear the Walking Dead season 8 midseason finale – 5 things that sucked

Here are five things that really sucked about this episode.

1. Morgan seeing red abruptly stops. I guess Madison’s words are so powerful and all that Morgan needed to allow him to come back to reality.
2. Shrike suddenly loses her motivation to “save the children.” Shrike was traumatized by witnessing her father torn apart by walkers, which is understandable. But to allow herself to be bitten by him was absurd and made the entire PADRE storyline pointless. And why was anyone nice to her in the end when she was just an awful person?
3. We will never see Morgan and Mo again. To set up a storyline to say that Morgan is going in search of Rick is so dumb. Lennie James has said he won’t play Morgan again after Fear TWD, so setting this up will only be a huge disappointment for fans who long for a Morgan/Rick reunion.
4. Dwight and Sherry’s storyline was for nothing. When Daryl lets Dwight go in search of Sherry instead of killing him, he thought he was doing so so they could live as happily as ever after as a couple could in an apocalypse. Now, after all they have been through, they split up? I will say that their story in this episode was heartbreaking and the best part of the midseason finale. Are these two characters we won’t be seeing again in this series? Another wasted storyline.
5. Madison’s lack of a storyline. The return of Madison Clark was supposed to be this HUGE event, and so far, she has had little to do with anything. She has sat on the sidelines and, although she’s been involved, should be the one in charge alongside Daniel. Perhaps this will be the case now that Morgan’s story has wrapped.
6. The post-credit scene better NOT be Troy Otto! If Troy Otto (Daniel Sharman) returns to this series, I don’t know if I can continue to watch. (I will because I want to know the fates of many other characters). But come on! Madison bashed his head with a hammer several times. The person featured in the scene had Strand’s aviators, a hammer, which appears to be the one Madison welded, and Alicia’s prosthetic arm. The other item, a map, marks a trail from Mexico to the gulf, with several points marked in Texas. So, Madison’s saying,  “No one’s gone until they’re gone,” doesn’t hold true; you can be bashed in the head several times and still not be gone.

Don’t get me wrong; I loved Troy in season 3. He was an amazing character, and Sharman did a great job in his portrayal, but it is just absurd to bring someone back who supposedly died of trauma to the brain.

Part 2 of Fear the Walking Dead season 8 will premiere later in 2023. The final six episodes will see the reappearance of Strand (Colman Domingo) and hopefully bring back many of the other characters we haven’t seen in this season.

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