Fear the Walking Dead Kills off SPOILER

Warning: this story contains spoilers for Sunday’s “Sonny Boy” episode of Fear TWD. History repeats itself on Fear the Walking Dead. Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) and right-hand Howard (Omid Abtahi) have spent Season 7 sending victims to their deaths off the roof of the Tower, the lone sanctuary spared from the radioactive fallout of nuclear blasts. It’s a stories-dropping fate that befell Will (Gus Halper), 15-year-old Ranger Ali (Ashton Arbab), and almost Morgan Jones (Lennie James), whose betrayal of Strand nearly saw him sent over the roof’s edge to become part of Strand’s walker moat guarding the Tower that has imprisoned Morgan’s family: Grace (Karen David) and Baby Mo.

In Sunday’s Season 7 Episode 12, “Sonny Boy,” the paranoid Strand cracks down on walkie-talkies – launching anyone caught with the contraband over the roof’s edge to become part of his walker horde down below. When he catches yes-man Howard with a walkie, Strand suspects him of joining the mutiny resistance inside the Tower.

After dangling Howard over the roof’s edge — “I need people I can trust, now more than ever,” Strand hisses as war looms with Alicia Clark (Alycia Debnam-Carey) — Strand gives Howard a chance to regain his lost trust by finding Baby Mo, who has suddenly vanished. If Howard doesn’t retrieve her before sunrise, Strand warns, “I’ll finish what we started on the roof.” 

Strand entrusts former lawman John Dorie Sr. (Keith Carradine) with finding Morgan’s missing daughter, offering to make him his new number two should he succeed where Howard fails. During his investigation into Mo’s disappearance, John learns the former history professor forged an addendum to the Travis Letter from the Battle of the Alamo, costing him his career, his reputation – and his marriage.

“She said I was more concerned with making history than I was with making a life for her and my son,” Howard tells John. “But this place, I have made history here. My wife and boy are out there somewhere, and if they find it, they’ll see that this history can be their life.” Now a post-apocalyptic historian, Howard sees the Tower as his legacy. 

That legacy includes throwing countless people off the roof, which will only be worth it if his missing family finds the Tower. If they don’t, Howard admits, “That would mean everything I’ve done has been for nothing.” 

John finds Mo hidden in the Tower basement by June Dorie (Jenna Elfman), caught planning to get the baby out to Morgan before Alicia’s army moves on the Tower. Testing his loyalty to the Tower, Strand orders John to push Howard over the roof’s edge for failing to find the baby.

John confesses he planted the walkie in Howard’s room to get in Strand’s ear and change the Tower. A cackling Strand again tells John to throw Howard off the roof — or watch June and Grace go over the edge instead. 

“I’m sorry, but you did the same to others for far less,” John says, shoving Howard to his death below. Strand reveals Howard’s family would never have found the Tower, anyway: Strand’s Rangers found their turned bodies months ago.

Strand kept the discovery secret because “it’s what drove him to help me build this place to what it’s become,” he confides in John. “Everyone needs something to drive them.”

In the end, Howard’s legacy is not to take his place in history with his family — but as one of the forgotten walkers rotting at the foot of Strand’s Tower for all time. Read on for the other major death in “Sonny Boy.” 

New episodes of Fear the Walking Dead Season 7 air Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Follow @CameronBonomolo on Twitter & @NewsOfTheDead for TWD Universe coverage all season long.