Morgan leads a team into the sub. They’re not fast enough.

A couple of episodes ago I suspected the writer’s room on FTWD had seen legendarily dark British nuclear drama Threads. This episode I’m absolutely convinced both of that and of the show’s late season inspection of a favoured post-apocalyptic trope. Planet of the Apes famously killed Charlton Heston as he rained nuclear fire down on the Earth in the sequel. The Terminator movies have been exploring what happens to the people who survive the end of the world, in various forms, for decades. Now, Fear The Walking Dead joins the party.

The catastrophe here unfolds starting with Riley, who’s revealed to be a former crew member. Delivering the apocalyptic tools of his old trade to a sociopath like Teddy is literally giving a child a flamethrower and Teddy, Glover in full messianic tattered glory, knows exactly what to do with it. He has purity of purpose and focus. Morgan’s people don’t and it may cost them everything.

The brilliance of this is that the tragedy is no one’s fault. The radioactivity that douses the sub slows down people who want to live, and the conflicting agenda of Morgan, who wants to rescue Alicia, and Strand, who wants to be rewarded for rescuing Alicia, were always going to collide. Lennie James and Colman Domingo have had surprisingly little screen time together this season and this episode more than makes up for it. Morgan is, at last, the man he always wanted to be: driven, principled, doing the right thing. Strand is the man he always was: driven, principled, concerned with his own survival even if it’s through an altruistic lens. The conflict between the two, and season 7 is happening, looks as inevitable as it is fascinating.

But what really fascinates, and terrifies, here is the simplicity of it; Teddy launches his missile. Every warhead aboard is coming down in the area. Everyone, potentially, has minutes left to live and at times like that, you find out who you really are. For Morgan, that’s a man of principle. For Strand, a man of determination. For everyone else? We’ll see next week in an episode with stakes higher than anything we’ve seen before now. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart