‘Fear The Walking Dead’ Mid-Season Finale Recap With Spoilers: No One’s Gone

We open on Madison.

It’s night. She sneaks up on someone whose back is to us. Demands they hand over the keys to their vehicle.

Madison readies her gun. Althea turns around.

“I lost everything. I got nothing else to lose,” Madison tells her.

“You think you’ve been through a lot? Lady,” Al says, “you got no idea.”

Now.

At the stadium, charred walkers claw at Al’s van. Al, Morgan, Charlie, Naomi and a wounded John are inside.

Naomi needs to get to the infirmary if she’s going to have a shot at saving John’s life.

Then.

Madison holds Al at gunpoint. She wants the keys. Goes through Al’s tapes.

“There are people out there who need me. And this truck’s gonna make finding them a hell of a lot easier.”

Al breaks free of her zipties and goes at Madison. She puts her on her ass, knocking her out. Madison takes off with Al’s precious recordings.

Now.

Morgan says he’ll go out. Naomi is coming with.

Althea uses the van’s heavy firepower to clear a path for the pair. They narrowly avoid an explosion.

Alicia stands amid the stadium seating. Rocket launcher in hand.

“They’re here,” Al says. “They found us.”

Slide 1

Then.

Madison goes through Al’s tapes. One after the other.

“Come on, Nick. Alicia. Please.”

She smacks the hell out of the dashboard.

Al returns, gun draw. Forces Madison out of the car.

“You’re going to tell me your story. Starting with who you’re looking for.”

Alicia, Strand, and Luciana open fire on Al. She fires back.

Morgan and Naomi fight their way through darkened tunnels of walkers.

John’s breathing starts to slow. He goes limp.

Naomi gives Al instructions over walkie talkie.

John has a message for the still-rolling camera.

“When this is all over… stop running from people. Alright? And Morgan… you do the same.”

The van is rocked by an RPG. A door drops off. Al is met by Alicia, gun drawn.

Slide 2

Then.

Al interviews a handcuffed Madison.

“You always put guns to people’s heads to get what you want?” she asks.

“If that’s what it takes,” Madison tells her.

Al digs deep. Asks her who she’s lost.

“What happened to your kids?”

“I didn’t say anything about kids.”

“Didn’t have to,” Al says. It’s obvious.

“I know I don’t have the story you’re looking for. But someone might be interested in yours one day,” Al tells her. “Tell me what happened to your kids.”

“I made them a promise I’d always keep them safe,” Madison says. “I wasn’t able to keep it.”

Now.

Alicia has Al at gunpoint. She holds Charlie hostage.

Al asks her not to hurt the kid. “Why?” Alicia asks. “She hurt me.”

She commands Al to get Naomi back to the van, or Charlie dies.

“It’s safe,” Al says into the walkie. “You can come out.”

John stealthily turns on a felled walkie, alerting Morgan and Naomi.

A fight breaks out. Al grapples Alicia.

 

Slide 3

Then.

“I promised them we’d find a place to live.” 
“What kind of place?” 
“Something that wasn’t just walls. We had those, in LA. In Mexico. Across the border. A bunch of places in between. What I was looking for was… different.” 
“How?” 
“I was looking for a place where my kids wouldn’t have to do what I did to you today.” 
“Did you find it?” 
“I thought I did.” 
“What happened?”

Now.

Alicia presses Al out of the van. Shoves her face perilously close to gnawing walkers.

“I’m going,” Naomi says. No. Morgan stops her. “They don’t want to kill me,” he says.

Al and Alicia knock over cups of ramen noodles. Alicia asks where she got them.

Alicia digs through Al’s tapes. She finds one labeled “Amina.”

“You knew her?”

 

Slide 4

Then.

Madison admits “what I’m looking for might not be possible.”

“There are certain things you always remember about your kids. No matter how old they get. Or how much things change. You don’t need a camera, ’cause it just sticks.”

Madison recalls a story of a younger Nick and Alicia who took in a sick bird. They nursed it back to health. “Gave it a chance when no one else would,” Madison says. “There’s not a whole lot of that left anymore.”

“That’s why I need to find a place where things will be different. Because that’s still in my kids.”

Alicia watches the tape. Madison’s words.

“I can’t imagine that part of them dying. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep it alive.”  

“She never told me your name,” Al tells Alicia. “The stadium… this was the place she was looking for.”

Alicia finds Morgan and Naomi. Raises her gun.

“I’m just trying to help my friend,” Morgan tells her.

“You can after you step aside.”

He doesn’t.

“My mom is dead because of what you did,” Alicia tells Naomi. 

Slide 5

Morgan tries to talk Alicia down.

Naomi pleads to save John. “You can do whatever you want after that.”

Alicia says no. Naomi tells her this isn’t who she is.

“I’m not that person anymore,” Naomi tells her.

Morgan steps in closer. Puts the gun right to his chest.

“You’d die for her? You’d die for her?” Alicia asks him.

“Somebody told me I’d end up with people again, but I didn’t want to believe him.” Morgan says he ran halfway across the country to prove him wrong.

He tells Alicia things can change.

“They did for me and they can for you.”

“They can’t,” Alicia cries. “They can’t.”

“They have,” Morgan tells her. “I stepped aside for your brother. I will not step aside for you.”

He sees in her what her mother saw in her. Takes the gun from her. She cries into his shoulder.

Slide 6

Then.

Al scribbles “Amina” on Madison’s tape. Cuts Madison free.

“We got separated a couple weeks back,” Madison says. Tells her her kids escaped the felled stadium. “I barely got out after.”

Al gifts her some food and a gun. They part on good terms.

The next day. Madison drives, led by a map.

At a motel, she reunites with Strand, Luci, Alicia, and Nick. They hug.

The pack find the stadium.

“Isn’t it a little big for us?”

“It’s not just for us, Victor. I’m thinking that’s why we haven’t found a place that worked for us.”

Madison was inspired to establish a community because “someone helped me when she didn’t have to.”

Now.

Both sides are united in the van.

“I don’t get it, Al. Why didn’t Madison tell us about you?”

Al asks what happened to her. Alicia tells her to pull over.

Slide 7

Naomi comforts John. Tells him he’ll be okay. He thanks her. “June,” she says. “My name is June.”

“June… well, that’s my favorite month,” John says.

The rest sit around a campfire.

“Tell me about that night,” Al says. Camera rolling.

Alicia reveals how it happened.

Nick and Alicia are surrounded by walkers in the parking lot of the stadium.

“We fought as hard as we could,” Luciana says.

They fight to free the Clark kids.

Madison, Luciana, and Strand clear a path.

“We just had to get to the stadium,” Alicia says.

“She said the walls would hold,” Strand says.

The other residents didn’t have the same faith in the stadium as Madison did.

Burning walkers advance on the stadium.

Cole and some others bail.

Charlie says Mel stole a car and saved her from the parking lot.

The people that tried to get away didn’t.

“All the people my mom found, all the people she brought in… they were gonna die,” Alicia says.

Naomi tried to talk them out of it. She believed the walls could hold.

She says when she got back it was too late. The caravan was overrun. The dead came at her.

“I ran until I couldn’t run anymore,” Naomi says.

“We thought you were still inside,” Alicia says. “We thought you died.”

Naomi thought they died, too. When the Vultures brought her in, she thought she had nowhere else to go.

“None of us could get out of the parking lot. We couldn’t get back to the stadium. There were too many dead,” Alicia says.

They cleared a path, Strand says. But Madison had another idea.

Madison lights a flare. Stares down a horde of the undead.

Madison brings them close. Waves the flare.

The dead close in.

“We reinforced the walls to keep the dead out. She knew they were strong enough to keep them in,” Alicia says.

Madison leads the dead inside, allowing the others to escape.

She tried to go through the tunnels to double back to the gate, but there were too many walkers, Strand says.

“So she locked herself in.”

Madison entombs herself in the stadium.

“Mom?” Alicia asks over walkie. “Mom?!”

The dead advance.

Madison speaks into her walkie.

“I was afraid to lose this place. Because I thought you needed it. To stay who you are right now. But you know it. No one’s gone until they’re gone.”

She raises the flare. Tosses it. The grass becomes a fiery blaze as Madison looks on.

Slide 8

“It was never about the stadium,” Alicia says.

“It was about the people,” Strand adds.

“It was about us,” says Luciana.

“That’s why my mom gave up her life.”

Al puts down the camera. Writes “Madison” on the tape. 

“Love Love Love” by The Mountain Goats plays. 

They eat. 

“Some things you’ll do for money and some you’ll do for fun, but the things you do for love, are gonna to come back to you one by one…”