Fear the Walking Dead Review [2×14]: “Wrath”

‘Fear the Walking Dead’ is everything from the start we never saw from its big-sister show—and it’s reached the point where humanity, anywhere, loses its meaning.

Nobody was surprised Ofelia (Mercedes Mason) took the truck—but why? Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) had been so intent on sticking together—rightly so—so why leave?

Changes loom as Nick (Frank Dillane) finds new bravery in his relationship with Luciana (Danay Garcia) and Travis (Cliff Curtis) is struggling to accept the loss of Chris (Lorenzo Henrie) and his safety. Madison (Kim Dickens) and Alicia attempt to comfort him, but Travis isn’t easy to convince.

Nick’s deal with Marco (Alejandro Edda) shows him only a nasty truth about what civilisation has become. Madison strongly suspects Chris has died in a car accident, and struggles to decide whether to tell Travis or not, with some counselling from Strand (Colman Domingo). As the situation worsens for Nick and Luciana, it’s bad news at the hotel too when Madison’s attempt at moving Brandon (Kelly Latz) results in mounting tension exploding into a mob-mentality of frustration.

Travis is still convinced Chris is out there. Alejandro’s (Paul Calderon) fraud is exposed by Nick, who is desperate to leave, to a heartbroken Luciana.

Luciana: When someone is dead to me, I let them go.

With the help of Andrés (Raul Casso) they reset Brandon’s shoulder and they pull the truth from him. Or Travis does. In a fit of uncharacteristic, scary rage, Travis beats the boys up until they finally say it. They couldn’t let him turn. They killed Chris.

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Danay Garcia has been a thrill to watch and a genius addition to the show—and she shines bright, brighter than ever, in this episode.

Marco may be threatening an oncoming slaughter, but Luciana, despite discovering Alejandro’s huge lie—cannot leave her home. She stresses that some, like herself, have fared better now than they did before the apocalypse. That this is the home they never had.

Luciana: This place, this is my home. Like I’ve never known one.

Nick: But you don’t have to die for it.

Luciana: I’m not planning on dying!

While her relationship with Nick has been low-key and almost randomly sprung on us, the chemistry between Dillane and Garcia is excellent. There’s no denying two young actors of their calibre. Garcia’s everything in Luciana. She is strong and she is a leader; yet she’s vulnerable, a fighter who clawed her way into fearlessness by finding and leading her home. Her people. Alejandro may have lied, and it was a little predictable, that one—but Alejandro hasn’t taken her home away from her. And she’ll be damned if she lets Marco.

Garcia’s wide array of emotion was genuinely heartbreaking to watch as her soul fought between her personal safety or the need to look after her people. Nick makes his stance clear, but Garcia’s depiction of Luciana’s greater moral battle is impeccable. Her disbelief and hurt at Alejandro’s revelation slowly grew and morphed; it became so deep that it hurt. This was fearless Luciana, crumbling as the foundation of her strength was cruelly taken away from her. Yet defiant she stood.

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Lorenzo James Henrie—please take a bow.

Chris was always a divisive character. Not everyone liked him; some found him infinitely more interesting in season two—but there was so much more to Chris than a simple cold-blooded killer. Still haunted by his father having no choice but to execute his mother, Chris’ fate had always been sealed.

Lorenzo Henrie’s exit from the show isn’t a surprising one. Whether you figured it out from his suspiciously short hair at San Diego Comic Con, or his casting in ‘Agents of Shield’, or the fact that his descent into violence was always going to backfire on the kid—he had to die. Yet there was still so much story left in him.

Truthfully, he was doomed the moment he stepped into Madison and Alicia’s room and picked up the sharp blade of glass. His increasing bloodlust only alienated him from everyone else as Chris—innocent, adventurous, curious Chris—developed to a point where remorse over killing a walker was a foreign concept to him.

Henrie’s depiction of that fall from grace has been a pleasure to watch. A true honour. It isn’t easy to portray a character that’ll be so controversial, but Henrie did it with fire and passion. Ultimately one of the more complex characters of ‘Fear the Walking Dead’, his presence—whether you liked Chris or not—will be sorely missed.

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It truly is the end of the world when near-pacifist Travis Manawa resorts to such explicit, gory violence—and that’s what ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ is about.

We knew as we encountered different civilisations willing to do awful things to others that we’d never dream of—or that we’d compare to war-zones—that the denouement of humanity would soon be approaching. And as stated above, when someone quite as peaceful as Travis explodes in vengeful rage and even ends up killing Brandon, you know humanity is lost.

It’s always what was so frustrating about Travis: his goodness. Despite all that the world has lost, and despite the clear changes (especially in his son), Travis remained steadfastly loyal to the belief that there’d be a solution to these things. And he was proven tragically wrong—by humanity.

And it’s humanity he does believe in, yet arguably it is not there anymore. We see it in Alejandro’s reveal; we see it in Marco’s pig of a personality; we see it in Brandon’s annoyingly ungrateful group of friends. All around our protagonists (and even the protagonists themselves), humanity slowly crumbles and it is unavoidable. It’s the apocalypse.

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Final Verdict: ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ has had a bumpy ride of a season—but these past few episodes have been great, and this one in particular has been a perfect set-up for ‘North’.

This has truly been one of the few—maybe only—episodes ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ has been near-perfect this season. Kate Barnow’s script was electrifying. Intense, scary and terribly, tragically human—Barnow captured the essence of all of our characters so wonderfully in ‘Wrath’. What particularly shone was the exceptionally believable yet awful-to-watch anger exploding from within Travis—yet another family member taken from him.

The only criticism here is the balance between the cast. Rightfully, Frank Dillane took more of a main role this episode whilst Alycia Debnam-Carey stepped back after shining as Alicia for a few episodes. But Ofelia and Strand’s roles in particular have been dramatically reduced to nothing of substance, so the notion of Ofelia going off alone to carry yet another plot-line doesn’t really make sense.

Stefan Schwartz’s direction was lovely. Most harrowing was the flashback of Chris lying in a pool of his own blood, completely dead. And as the camera panned out slowly, it flickered to Brandon, his killer, lying in his pool of own blood. Dead. Sprawled just like Chris was. ‘Fear the Walking Dead’, despite some rocky episodes, has always been a feast for the eyes. Schwartz made sure that feast never ended.

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Questions and comments to ponder:

• Chris may have not been the most popular character, but Lorenzo Henrie’s been absolutely brilliant. Thank you for a truly remarkable performance. I can’t wait to see his career skyrocket—starting with ‘Agents of Shield’!
• Strand and Ofelia are still very much background characters. Even the newly introduced Andrés or Marco have had much more compelling and important contributions to the story than them. Why is that?
• The scheduling of this was clever by AMC—because by the end, I was left hooked by the episode and eager for more. This is binge culture at its worst! I’m sticking the next one in!
• It’s disappointing that this season has been, for the most part, quite poor. But these past five episodes or so have made up for it.
• We asked our Twitter followers who kicked the most ass for them in this year’s ‘Fear the Walking Dead’—and the answer, with a remarkable 69% of the votes, was Alicia Clark—our scene stealer!

For the next ‘FEAR THE WALKING DEAD’ review, click here!