Fear the Walking Dead Recap: “Odessa”

Fear the Walking Dead‘s “Odessa” episode reveals PADRE’s origins with a flashback to 12 years ago. Siblings Samantha (Maya Eshet) and Benjamin (Daniel Rashid) are the offspring of U.S. Army General Krennick (Michael B. Silver), a birder and widower. Using binoculars given to him by his wife so he’ll “always see what’s coming,” the general sees a middle-spotted woodpecker as a sign that the Krennicks will survive without their matriarch. These birds live in families and cooperate to raise their young, he explains, and if they can do it, so can PADRE.

The island is loading up a boat with shipping containers labeled P.A.D.R.E., each filled with enough supplies for people to rebuild. After Operation Cobalt bombed Los Angeles and Atlanta to stop the spread of the Wildfire Virus, the government enacted the P.A.D.R.E program: a distribution protocol to rebuild the country by seeding new communities across the United States. The military is in contact with Senator Elias Vasquez (Jared Gibson), who is holed up in an underground bunker beneath the Franklin Hotel in Galveston, Texas.

Krennick’s duty is to leave the safety of the island and establish contact with other communities, so he reminds his children to use their code names when communicating by radio: Ben is christened Crane, and Samantha is Shrike. “A shrike may be small, but it’s brutal when it needs to be,” Krennick reminds her. “It doesn’t hesitate to look after its family.”

In the present, Shrike is conducting human experiments on zombie-bitten test subjects to cure carrion bites, using June’s (Jenna Elfman) radiotherapy treatments. Inside the train car converted into a hospital, June learns that Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) is alive — and that Shrike has been collecting her blood for the past seven years. Because Madison’s daughter Alicia managed to survive a bite for as long as she did, Shrike wants to test a theory that “maybe it was something besides the radiation — something hereditary.” Anything is possible, June says, explaining that the bitten Finch (Gavin Warren) has been responding to the radiation after being treated for the past week.

Fearing she won’t survive the experiment, Madison entrusts June with getting a file off the island. The file contains the real names of the kids she took for PADRE as a Collector and where she took them from. Her dying wish is to fulfill her promise to Mo (Zoey Merchant) and track down the kids’ parents. Shrike, angry that Madison betrayed PADRE, promises that Morgan Jones (Lennie James) will suffer the same fate as soon as he’s found. PADRE is doing this for the “same reason he does everything: to ensure what he’s built endures.” In the end, Shrike says, Madison and Morgan will be remembered for helping PADRE stop walker bites from killing.

Meanwhile, Mo convinces PADRE prefect Dove (Jayla Walton) to investigate the train car to find Finch, who never returned from his appendectomy. Before Shrike can inflict a walker’s bite on Madison, Mo frees Madison and June, but the trio is caught by Dove. The experiments are “protecting what PADRE’s built” and “ensuring you kids have a future,” says Shrike, but Dove doesn’t buy it. Feeling betrayed, Dove sides with Mo. She’ll help them get to the island so Madison can get the file and expose PADRE — helping her and all the kids she took. Dove doesn’t care about her parents. She only wants the truth.

The truth: Shrike reveals that she’s PADRE’s daughter. 12 years earlier, Samantha and Ben were on the island when walkers invaded the shipyard containing the P.A.D.R.E. shipping containers. The Krennick siblings were swarmed by camouflage-clad carrion… 

In the present day, Madison, Mo, June, and Dove reach the shore, where they’re surrounded by a small army led by the Commander. It’s Daniel Salazar (Ruben Blades), who is surprised to learn after all these years that Madison is alive. As he sips on yerba mate tea — it’s good for the mental focus, he explains of his cured memory loss — Daniel tells Madison that he’s been searching for the island for years. Madison spent those years collecting children for PADRE, and now she wants the chance to set things right. 

Daniel’s army are all parents whose children have been kidnapped by PADRE. Seven years earlier, Morgan told PADRE about the survivors who escaped irradiated Texas on rafts. The group was picked up and processed according to their “skills and usefulness,” so the aged Daniel was “too old to be of any use” and dumped in the swamp. Some went to the mainland, some went to the island, and others went… somewhere.

Charlie (Alexa Nisenson) was “very sick,” says Daniel of the teenager who was last seen suffering from radiation sickness. Daniel promised to be there for Charlie at the end so she wouldn’t have to die alone, but Daniel broke his promise. “I wasn’t there for her,” he recalls tearfully. “I wasn’t there for Luciana, either.” Left without a purpose, Daniel was motivated by the parents in search of their kidnapped children. “So I organized and trained them, turned them into an army, strong, getting stronger. Because there’s more of them out there,” Daniel says. “I lost my family, Madison. But I’m gonna fight with everything I got to help these folks get back to theirs.” If Daniel’s army helps them get those files, Madison says he can finally find out what happened to Charlie and Luciana (Danay Garcia). 

Daniel’s army manages to hold off PADRE’s forces, allowing Madison, June, and Dove to return to the island with a hostage Shrike. Meanwhile, inside the interrogation room, PADRE talks to Finch from behind the one-way mirror. After being bit, PADRE notes the boy is “still here — healthy and thriving.” When Finch remarks that his parents, Red Kite/Dwight (Austin Amelio) and Starling/Sherry (Christine Evangelista), saved him, PADRE cuts in: “No. We did.” 

Madison negotiates a face-to-face with PADRE. “No more hiding behind the mirror,” she says. “Time to tell the truth.” Every kid on the island deserves to know why PADRE had them ripped away from their parents but wouldn’t do the same for his own daughter. Under threat of Madison revealing Shrike’s identity, her group is allowed into the interrogation room (where the disguised and distorted voice is explained away by a faulty wire). As Madison unpacks her files from a box marked “Collector: Lark,” Shrike tells her that what PADRE does is the only way to protect the kids “from what happened here before.”

“You always say you never lost a kid,” Madison says into the mirror. “I don’t know if that’s true. Who did you lose?”

12 years ago, Samantha and Ben were swarmed by carrion when their father saved them. The shipyard of P.A.D.R.E. containers that could rebuild the country belonged to the dead.

“You’re never going to get my father to admit to anything,” Shrike tells Madison. That’s because 12 years ago, General Krennick died saving his children from the carrion. Samantha and Ben watched their father be bitten by carrion, his final words pleading to them: “Don’t let this die. It’s too important. I love you both.”

With a swing of her hammer, Madison shatters the mirror to reveal PADRE: Ben. “My father can’t answer you because my father is dead,” Shrike says. “My brother and I lost him a long time ago. You wanted to ask PADRE for the truth… go ahead. We are PADRE.”

Shrike explains that the siblings didn’t know how to go on after their father’s death. Samantha and Ben were trapped in the shipyard when they considered using their father’s gun to die by suicide — only for a reprieve to come over the radio: it was a child wanting to know what happened to his parents. If the children knew that their parents died, “It would break them. We told them their parents abandoned them. That they knew they couldn’t take care of them, so they fled.” The children were then raised to believe that their only family is PADRE. “We told them we’ll face this new world together, without our parents. That we’ll be better for it,” Shrike says. And the containers? “Our father died protecting what was inside. We made sure it stayed that way.” Samantha and Ben made adults believe that PADRE — their father — was still alive, and people “kept on believing.”

Inside the file “DOVE-038” is the truth: that Dove’s birth name is Odessa Sanderson. Madison remembers: seven years ago, she took a young girl named Odessa from her mother on a beach. Her mother was Ava Sanderson (Lyndon Smith), who confronted Collector Madison in the season 7 finale. Madison remembers how Ava died. And how she had to put her down. She was trying to rescue Odessa from PADRE when she died. Dove, distraught over the truth about her mother, wants to make Madison pay. “She will,” says Shrike, “But not this way.” PADRE is going to continue what they started at the train.

“My brother and I are protecting these kids from the worst pain of all. The pain of losing a parent,” Shrike says. Ben explains the experiments: “As long as the world is the way it is, children will continue to experience unimaginable loss. But if there’s a cure, that would change everything.” If PADRE can cure carrion bites, Shrike says, “We could go back to family. To connection. But in the meantime, we’re going to protect these kids the way we always have.

Back on the mainland, Madison and June reunite with Daniel’s army. She knows the children — and their parents — aren’t going to follow her after what she did as a Collector. “I’m not the leader you need. But I think I know who might be.” Morgan.

At the shipyard, Shrike radios Crane. She reports that parents know where the island is, which means it’s only a matter of time until they get there. “They’ll destroy everything we built,” Crane says. Shrike responds: “Not if we’re not here. It doesn’t matter if they know who we are. What matters is that what we built survives.” They’re going to expand. “We’re going to do what dad said.”

Crane points out there are thousands of carrion in the shipyard guarding the P.A.D.R.E. containers. Carrion they put there to protect what’s inside. “We taught the kids how to fight for a reason,” Shrike says. “It’s time they showed us what they’ve learned.”

New episodes of Fear the Walking Dead premiere Thursdays on AMC+ and Sundays on AMC. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow @CameronBonomolo and @NewsOfTheDead on Twitter for more TWD Universe coverage.