Warning: Spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead season 8, episode 15
Fear the Walking Dead ended its Strand storyline by copying The Walking Dead’s final battle between Rick and Negan. In season 8, The Walking Dead brought the All-Out War to a dramatic close with a brutal showdown between Rick and the leader of the Saviors. But despite all his promises to kill the villain, Rick decided at the last minute to spare his enemy’s life.
Rick’s decision was a huge one for the series because if it hadn’t gone in that direction, The Walking Dead would be missing one of its most important characters. Rick telling Siddiq to save a dying Negan set the stage for him to stay on the show and eventually become an ally to the main characters. Fear the Walking Dead offered a similar twist with Colman Domingo’s Victor Strand. Regardless of all the things he’s done as of late, it looks like Strand is about to realign himself with Morgan’s group. In Fear the Walking Dead season 7, episode 15, titled “Amina”, Alycia Debnam-Carey’s Alicia sent the defeated villain with the rest of the main characters to build new lives.
What happened in Alicia’s final Fear the Walking Dead episode essentially repeated The Walking Dead season 8’s ending. Alicia had already decided against killing Strand, but this episode had the challenge of getting her to go a step further: not only did she have to spare him, but she also had to save his life. Alicia was initially opposed to the idea, but the events that took place in the episode helped motivated Alicia to rescue him. Pushed forward by a hallucination of her younger self, Alicia reminisced about her mother and talked with Strand about Madison’s own reasons for not killing him in a previous season. How the episode invoked the memory of Madison in order to get Alicia to save Strand had a lot in common with Carl’s role in Rick’s decision to save Negan.
In The Walking Dead, Carl’s hopes for the future were the biggest motivator for Rick when he chose to imprison rather than kill Negan. Rick was so full of hatred and rage that there was no conceivable way that he would have reached the same decision without Carl’s death. Carl’s dream wasn’t one that Rick had an interest in fulfilling until after he had died. Alicia faced a similar situation in Fear the Walking Dead season 7 when she realized that she had failed to build the world that Madison had wanted her children to make. Convinced she was dying, she believed that in saving Strand, he could be the one to accomplish what she couldn’t.
This, coupled with Alicia’s own love for Strand, ensured that in spite of his actions, Strand will be back in Fear the Walking Dead season 8, presumably as an ally to Morgan and the others. Just as it was with Negan and Alexandria in The Walking Dead, Alicia’s choice will give Strand an opportunity to earn the trust of Morgan’s group. Whether or not he’ll be able to earn his redemption, though, remains to be seen.
Fear the Walking Dead releases new episodes on Sundays on AMC.
