Editor’s Note: The following are spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead season 8 episodes 1-3.
The end may be near for AMC Fear the walking dead but later plot development can ensure longevity the walking Dead franchise. In the second episode of the eighth season, “The Blue Jay”, viewers finally caught up with June (Jenna Elfman) who has become a survival expert since we last saw her. Oh, and now the showrunners have introduced the possibility of a cure. This may change in the future the walking Dead universe in a monumental way. This begs the question: do we want and should we expand the world the walking Dead if it only ends up becoming a routine to sit on?
Now that the franchise timeline is starting to level off and we’ve been promised some closure with the highly anticipated Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michon (Danai Garay) mini-series, isn’t it time for the fans’ expectations to come true? Were our questions answered? Maybe the cure (if it really exists) will provide the universe overlap and connective tissue that hardcore fans have been waiting for for years. It is unlikely that this large plot element will be resolved during Fears last season. In all likelihood, this is the carrot that showrunners use to keep viewers hooked. WITH The Walking Dead: Dead City Premiering soon, it looks like the franchise has no end in sight and the drug could play a major role in the future. But the cure may be a creative twist, which the ongoing tales of the dead desperately need. It remains to be seen if this new direction can restore our faith in the pop culture phenomenon that event television once was.
Is there a cure for Fear the Walking Dead?
In the June episode of Blue Jay, June has now become a woodland vigilante who has honed her. McGuire-such as stealth and survival skills to fight the current villain PADRE. A move that doesn’t make the slightest sense considering we’ve heard countless times over the course of several episodes about how formidable PADRE is and what they’ll do to people who cross them. Viewers have yet to see evidence to support these claims. We’ve had very little to offer so far, and PADRE doesn’t seem any more evil than The Commonwealth or CRM.
For seven years in a swampy area within a 20 mile radius, June used tranquilizer darts to subdue and cut off the fingers of a PADRE soldier, as post-apocalyptic souvenirs, and as evidence (sorry) of the PADRE’s authoritarian tactics. This all-seeing and all-knowing organization has been ambushed several times by the same person, and so due to a shortage of medical technicians, they need to hire a nurse. The second story involves Sherry (Christine Evangelista), Dwight (Austin Amelio), whose activity of capturing children is interrupted by June and a stowaway: their baby Finch (Gavin Warren). At her cabin in the woods, June is approached by Adrian (Jonathan Medina) for helping to save her daughter from PADRE. A hostile June refuses, for reasons that will become clear later. Sherry and Dwight, unsure what to do with Finch, end up in an abandoned carriage with June. Finch is suffering from appendicitis and needs medical attention that June can offer. The train car was used in the past by PADRE for human experimentation and possible drug discovery. June’s medical expertise has been used (at gunpoint) by the PADRE using radiation and other barbaric methods to achieve her goals, and she feels guilty as a result.
So, if the CDC and famous scientists can’t develop a cure, should we believe that June can do it in an abandoned train car with intermittent electricity? Sherry and Dwight have a similar argument about whether they will or won’t about Finch’s return to PADR as Morgan (Lenny James) and Madison (Kim Dickens) was in the previous episode. The chained walkers infesting the carriage break out, and June confesses her complicity in the death of Adrian’s daughter. Overcome with grief, Adrian allows himself to be consumed by the walkers. Leather-clad villain PADRE Shrike (Maya Eshet) outmaneuvered our heroes, putting Jun in a position where she had no choice but to comply. The search for a cure begins.
What does the cure mean for the Walking Dead universe?
At the season 1 finale The walking Dead, “TS-19″, Rick Grimes and his team arrived at the CDC looking for answers and to see if there is a cure and if peace can one day be restored. Virologist Edwin Jenner (Noah Emmerich) was the last person standing in the facility and told Rick in no uncertain terms that there was and would not be a cure. Emmerich reprized his role in The Walking Dead: Beyondreferring to options walkers. It seems rather unexpected to come up with this possibility so late in the game. This demonstrates the absence of unique ideas, as if the creators threw a few ideas at the wall and hoped that one of them would take root. A cure that appeared in this universe could focus the narrative, or conversely, send it into a dozen different plot threads that won’t be resolved anytime soon.
It makes more sense, at least from a commercial standpoint. the walking Dead and its subsequent by-products are milk cows to be milked. The cure will offer a solution when interest wanes, and may just be a MacGuffin. A cure in this post-apocalyptic landscape will create an information network that attracts interest and attention from other powerful groups. So far in Fear, research on individual groups has been sketchy at best and never fully exploited the potential of the communities with which they came into contact. PADRE continues this trend. It would be better if PADRE was introduced not as a new organization, but as an additional group in relation to CRM. This would provide a much-needed coincidence and connection to the overall mythology. So is the medicine that sets the tone for the last season Fear? Or will those in power prolong our agony by moving the plot forward at a walking pace?
Source: Collider
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