‘Fear the Walking Dead’: A Shocking Revelation and Another HUGE Death (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 Episode 9, “Things Left to Do.”]
Last week’s episode of Fear the Walking Dead brought us nothing but heartbreak after gunslinger John Dorie’s (Garret Dillahunt) devastating death, but this week’s episode also brought us a huge shocker — villain Virginia (Colby Minifie) and Dakota (Zoe Coletti) are related, but they’re definitely not sisters. And just when we’d picked our jaws up off the floor from that reveal, the final scene of this week’s hour had us dropping ‘em all over again.
There’s a lot going on in “Things Left to Do” — here’s how it all goes down.
Ryan Green/AMC
The Lineup, 2.0
As the episode opens, Ginny has lined up a few of Morgan’s (Lennie James) best pals, right where their last big showdown went down, outside the chapel. She demands they tell her where Morgan’s been hiding, and she injures Daniel (Rubén Blades) when he refuses to give him up (Daniel, by the way, appears to still be playing his “harmless old man” role for Virginia). She eventually moves on to Morgan’s beau Grace (Karen David) and radios Morgan to say that if he doesn’t show up in Lawton with her sister, she’ll kill Grace… and their unborn child.
That, of course, gets Morgan to appear out of the blue. He’s really good at that, isn’t he? But he doesn’t have Dakota with him. Things escalate, as they always do, but surprisingly, they escalate against Virginia. Turns out, Strand (Colman Domingo) only joined Virginia’s side to “build an army” against her, which he seems to have succeeded in doing. Outnumbered and outgunned, Ginny manages to stuff the team’s weakest members, Grace and Daniel, into a car, which gets away. However, Ginny gets shot in the shoulder and doesn’t manage to escape with them.
The Truth Comes Out
The vast majority of the conflict in the episode revolves around whether or not Morgan will actually kill Ginny. Really, at this point, he can’t — if she dies, his friends die. So instead of killing her, Morgan brings her back to the wreckage of the water tower where Dakota saved him, and it’s there we learn, from Ginny, that Dakota isn’t really her sister. “She’s my daughter,” she explains to Morgan. Ginny had Dakota when she was very young, and her parents were so ashamed that they forced Ginny to pretend Dakota was her sibling, rather than her child. Why was she so hell-bent on finding Dakota? She wanted to tell her the truth.
They end up running from the The End is the Beginning folks, who want Ginny dead, period. Except that might not really be the case: Morgan ends up in a standoff with Sherry (Christine Evangelista) over Ginny, and eventually, Sherry allows them to leave. From there, Morgan says he’ll take Ginny to the place he’s building, and Ginny begs him to let her and her daughter go away together. “We’ll find someplace so far away from here, you’ll never see us again,” she says.
Ryan Green/AMC
To Kill or Not to Kill, That is the Question
Morgan takes Ginny to the dam, but The End is the Beginning and Strand’s new army both show up — and both are demanding Morgan hands over Virginia. When Ginny hears that, she changes what she wants; she wants Dakota to be able to live in Morgan’s community. She wants a second chance for her child. She’ll release Grace and Daniel and make sure the fight ends… only if Morgan kills her, rather than the angry people outside.
Morgan takes the deal, and he takes Ginny outside the gates of his community. He has her kneel down with her head on a rock, ready to behead her with his axe. He raises it, and — he has flashbacks of himself with John, with Grace, with his friends. Despite Ginny’s desperate prompting, he can’t go through with it. “The future I’m trying to build, if we start like this, we are no better than you!” Morgan yells at her. He makes the decision that Ginny will have to live with what she’s done, and face her kid to tell the truth.
Mother-Daughter Reunion
He then takes her to see Dakota, who, predictably, isn’t pleased to see Ginny one bit. She still wants her only living family member to be dead, and she still hasn’t forgiven her for killing their parents. Crying, Ginny tells her the truth: that they weren’t her parents, and she’s not her sister. Hearing that all the awful things Ginny did were for her doesn’t soften Dakota’s heart though. She insists Ginny never should have “brought her into this world,” and that she “never should have been alive.”
In the aftermath of Morgan’s big decision, and with him doubling down on it, the rest of the group splits up. Strand’s going off on his own journey with his army, and he tells longtime buddy Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) he’s going to find something that “gives [her] a reason to come and join [him].” Former lovebirds Dwight (Austin Amelio) and Sherry still don’t get back together, as Sherry’s not ready for a quiet life just yet. And Grace and Daniel come back to their friends. Newly widowed June (Jenna Elfman) also gets back to the dam, with John’s hat and gun in hand.
Ryan Green/AMC
June Dorie Strikes Back
Now that those who wanted Ginny dead are gone, Morgan changes the deal again. He tells Ginny he’ll allow her to leave with Dakota. “She doesn’t need this place, she needs you,” Morgan says. He leaves June to change Ginny’s dressing… which is probably not the best plan. June reflects to Ginny about her own daughter, and how her daughter’s illness — and June’s cover-up — led to the death of everyone in her original camp. She asks Ginny if she knew, back at Lawton, that Dakota was a killer. “I would do anything for my daughter, June,” Ginny says. That’s when June pulls out the gun, and, a few moments later, she shoots Ginny in the head. June walks off into the desert, alone, wearing John’s hat.
Other Observations
- This episode has left me with so many conflicting emotions. On one hand, this was a cool development for June, a character who hasn’t had nearly enough going on. On the other, I was starting to think Ginny could’ve been a really neat Negan-type figure for this show, and Minifie and James were great together. Plus, the kind of twisted family dynamic between Ginny and Dakota reminded me of the old Fear.
- I truly didn’t see that Ginny twist coming. I have to hand it to the writers — that was a solid motivation for her character, and it makes her desperation to find her “sister,” who hates her, make a ton more sense.
- I am not getting my hopes up that Strand’s going to find Madison (Kim Dickens), and that’s the thing that makes Alicia want to join him. I’m not. Really. But man, wouldn’t that be awesome?
- I’m interested to see where the show goes from here. I kind of thought the Ginny-Morgan conflict was going to take the back half of the season, but I guess now we’ve still got Ginny’s outposts and The End is the Beginning, who might not be friends? Plus, there’s the cult group Alicia seems to discover in the trailers.
- Rating: 5/5. With some unpredictable twists and a stunning ending, Fear the Walking Dead’s sixth season is shaping up to be one of the show’s best, thanks to episodes with major moments like this.
Fear the Walking Dead, Sundays, 9/8c, AMC
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