A long-missing character from The Walking Dead makes a surprise return in Sunday’s Fear the Walking Dead, “Alaska,” where Althea (Maggie Grace) and Dwight (Austin Amelio) are plagued by new dangers while on a recon mission for Virginia (Colby Minifie). The Pioneer leader is aware of a mounting threat and sends Al and Dwight, both wearing body-mounted cameras, to document and determine the cause of mysterious deaths in the area. Four days and hundreds of locations into their recon and scavenging assignment, a Pioneer Ranger radios in orders to keep searching so that “we make sure what happened to them doesn’t happen to us.”
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When Al intercepts a radio message from old flame Isabelle (Sydney Lemmon) — the Civic Republic Military soldier who flew away in a helicopter last season — Dwight pushes Al to go AWOL and reconnect with Isabelle when she touches down at a refueling station in the city in T-minus 10 hours.
“You’re talking to a guy who walked halfway across the country because his wife left him a note,” Dwight says of the missing Sherry (Christine Evangelista). His wife disappeared a year earlier in a season 7 episode of The Walking Dead, and it was her trail of notes that brought him west and to the group of survivors led by Morgan Jones (Lennie James).
Al and Dwight follow coordinates leading them to drop site Baker, a city building with a helipad on its roof. They find the building’s entrance defaced with a cryptic message previously seen spray-painted on the side of a washed-up submarine: “The end is the beginning.”
Their path to the roof is impeded by a zombie-filled stairwell, forcing them onto the upper floors where they encounter Nora (Devyn Tyler) and a small group of survivors who have been infected by bubonic plague-carrying rats. They’ll die without the antibiotic ciprofloxacin, and so will Dwight: he shows symptoms after crawling through a rat-infested tunnel.
Dwight is determined to get Al to the roof, telling her, “You know how much crazy shit I went through to try to find Sherry? This is the least I can do for you.” Al, Dwight, and Nora clear a path to roof access 34 floors up, leaving Al to reach the helipad as Dwight and Nora plan to break away and raid nearby pharmacies for antibiotics.
“I don’t think I’d say anything. To Sherry,” Dwight tells Al before she goes up, answering a question from earlier. “If I saw her, I think I’d just hold her as tight as I can.”
At the helipad, Al makes contact with Isabelle over walkie-talkie but the helicopter refuses to land. “Ground command, do you copy? Drop site Baker has been burned. Proceeding to drop site Delta.” Cracking open a supply crate, Al discovers a case of ciprofloxacin — enough for an entire floor of people.
On the ground floor, Al discovers a blood-stained can of spray paint and suspects someone unleashed the infected rats and made these people sick. Just then, Al’s walkie-talkie springs to life with a woman’s voice: “I saw your signal flare. Is someone in trouble on the roof? Is someone in trouble on the roof?” Dwight takes the walkie. “Honey? Is that you?” After a silence that lasts a lifetime, the woman on the other end answers: “Dwight?”
Outside, Dwight’s search ends when he lays eyes on his wife. Dwight doesn’t say anything and holds Sherry as tight as he can.
“You’ve got to keep watching because things start happening with him because of her,” Amelio told ComicBook.com when asked what happens next between the reunited couple. “Some things that are good, some things that are bad. That’s all I’ll say.”
New episodes of Fear the Walking Dead premiere Sundays at 9 pm ET/8c on AMC. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD.
