PADRE Origins Revealed on Fear the Walking Dead

[Warning: This story contains spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead’s “Odessa” episode.] Is PADRE a person or a place? That’s been the question since season 7 of Fear the Walking Dead, where we learned that Alicia Clark (Alycia Debnam-Carey) had gone missing searching for this person or place that might not even exist. Will (Gus Halper) revealed that PADRE was a safe place “with plans to rebuild and the resources to do it,” but its secret location died with Oklahoma Senator Elias Vazquez (Jared Gibson) in a government bunker beneath the Franklin Hotel in Galveston, Texas. The very same bunker where Alicia found classified government documents marked “P.A.D.R.E.: Rebuilding Our Country’s Future.” 

Season 7 also revealed that PADRE’s Collectors “rescue” (kidnap) “eggs” (children), separating parents from their offspring and severing all attachments and connections. As it turns out, PADRE is both a person and a place: an island surrounded by swamp. 

“Fledglings” raised on the island are named after birds — “Wren,” “Dove,” “Finch,” and the like — and trained to fight “carrion” (walkers) as they recite the settlement mantra: “Who are we learning this for? PADRE! Who sustains our way of life? PADRE! Who is teaching us to be strong? PADRE! Who is rebuilding the world? PADRE!”

PADRE recruited Madison Clark/”Lark” (Kim Dickens) and Morgan Jones/”Nightingale” (Lennie James) as Collectors, using their families against them to manipulate them into bringing more children to the island — including Morgan’s now eight-year-old daughter, Mo/”Wren” (Zoey Merchant). In secret, PADRE’s Shrike has been conducting human experiments, forcing June/”Blue Jay” (Jenna Elfman) to treat zombie-bitten test subjects with lethal doses of radiation in PADRE’s search for a means to cure carrion bites.

What Is P.A.D.R.E. on Fear the Walking Dead?

Fear the Walking Dead‘s “Odessa” episode flashes back to 12 years earlier, after the U.S. military’s Operation Cobalt bombed Los Angeles, Atlanta, and other heavily-populated cities to stop the spread of the Wildfire Virus in the early days of the outbreak. The P.A.D.R.E. program is the U.S. government’s distribution protocol to rebuild the country: PADRE island is the site of a military shipyard storing shipping containers marked P.A.D.R.E, each filled with sufficient supplies for survivors to seed new communities across the United States. 

Overseeing the program is U.S. Army General Krennick (Michael B. Silver), a birder who instructs his children to communicate over the radio with code names for their safety: Samantha is christened “Shrike” (Maya Eshet), and Ben is “Crane” (Daniel Rashid). 

Who Is PADRE in Fear the Walking Dead?

It’s revealed that Shrike and Crane are PADRE. Orphaned after their father was bit and turned during a walker siege on the P.A.D.R.E. shipyard, the Krennick siblings adopted PADRE’s mantle to protect what he built and ensure the island’s children have a future. They then made the children believe their parents abandoned them to spare them “the worst pain of all: the pain of losing a parent.”

Until Shrike and Crane can perfect the radiotherapy treatments to prevent people from dying from infected carrion bites — effectively neutralizing walker bites — children will “continue to experience unimaginable loss,” it’s explained. Only once there’s a cure can they return to family and connection.

If PADRE is to expand and rebuild the world, they’ll need what’s inside the containers — containers PADRE protected by releasing thousands of carrion into the shipyard. “We taught the kids how to fight for a reason,” Shrike reminds Crane. “It’s time they showed us what they’ve learned.”

“The third episode really lifts the veil on PADRE. They were kind of trying to rewrite the way we live. It was all rooted in connection, the very thing that PADRE now is trying to eradicate,” showrunner Andrew Chambliss explained on AMC+’s Fear TWD: Episode Insider. “And what this episode does is unpack how something with such benevolent beginnings could be perverted in such a way that it could be this unrecognizable force that we know in the present day.”

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.