AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead
Season 5, Episode 13: “Leave What You Don’t”
Directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer
Written by Ashley Cardiff & Nick Bernardone

* For a recap & review of the previous episode, “Ner Tamid” – click here
* For a recap & review of the next episode, “Today and Tomorrow” – click here
We see Logan— a.k.a “Desert Fox” over the radio— a while back. He was leaving those boxes along the road, setting up stations with Clayton a.k.a Polar Bear. They were helping people. Logan got a call from a woman, Serena, who’d been trapped by walkers at Cleon’s Feedbag. He desperately attempted to get to her. But he ran out of gas, and wasn’t able to reach Clayton, either. He tried to run the last mile or so on foot, only to get back and find her being eaten by zombies.
He broke down outside. Then a group on horseback arrived. The leader, Virginia (Colby Minifie), had been watching Logan. They were looking to do it “bigger and better.”

At the oil fields, zombies are used for labour to churn machinery. Luciana, Wendell, and the kids all do their part. It’s a messy job, but a necessary one in the post-zombie apocalypse world. They suddenly hear a truck coming towards the gate. It doesn’t stop, blowing the thing down. Logan and his convoy have arrived. Could get ugly.

“Together,
we can get from yesterday to tomorrow.”

Everyone else is out on the road. John and June are heading back for the oil fields. Alicia and Strand are off doing their thing— she’s painting more phoenixes on trees and wanting to find Wes again, whereas Strand doesn’t want to waste time on someone who clearly doesn’t care. At the oil fields, Logan’s burning Clayton’s notebooks. He’s convinced they’re only working against “survival of the fittest” and evolution. He has his own ideas about the future. First, he needs someone to tell them the process for the gas.
Logan’s other assholes buddies have been taken at gunpoint by Sarah and Dwight. This gives the pair a jump on Logan when they return. In the hills, June’s with cowboy John. He’s got his rifle trained and ready to do what needs doing. “The show must go on,” Logan says. He remains pretty cocky. Sarah again tries speaking reason to their enemy, talking truthfully about Clayton’s death and how the guilt weighs heavy on her now. She agrees to help Logan, in order to let the kids walk free.

Logan tells Sarah about trying to save Serena. This was at the same time Sarah and Wendell stole Clayton’s truck. A fantastic parallel here, as we cut back and forth between him raging at the brother-sister pair, then Strand running along the road with Alicia, both trying to help someone like Logan did before.
Bigger problems back at the oil fields.
Zombies stumble into the pit. Plus, the fire’s raging “too hot” for Luciana to stop. John tries to snipe as many walkers from the distance as he can, but it’s not enough. It’s fast becoming dangerous. Our survivors have to escape, or it’ll likely mean death. Logan’s convoy pals likewise decide to bail, leaving him alone with only fire and the hungry dead mouths gnashing in the dirt and smoke.
Sarah can’t force herself to leave Logan behind after what she did to Clayton. She drags him into a shed nearby. He’s pissed at her for bothering. He’s gradually become a total nihilist. Irony strikes when Logan hears the same broadcast Alicia and Strand heard. And it’s in Cleon’s Feedbag where the woman’s waiting. A moment of serendipity. Logan doesn’t see it that way, telling her: “You‘re on your own, sweetheart.” He points her to the gun he dropped when he was there, suggesting suicide. He sees no hope whatsoever, and doesn’t want others to be instilled with false hope. “It‘s better this way,” the woman responds. She pulls the trigger as the walkers burst inside after her.
Except it wasn’t her. It’s Wes— he heard the broadcast, inspired by Alicia to find this woman. When Alicia and Strand get to the Feedbag, they meet the woman, along with Wes. The woman says she was in a community of people, and had to get away from them, which is how she wound up stranded.

At the oil field, Logan’s changed his mind about “the ticket to the promised land.” He tells his angry convoy buddies to lower their weapons, to be done with the aggression. So they do, and John, as well as the others, do the same. Logan’s had a crisis of faith twice now, leading him back around to morality.
Out of nowhere, from the hills, shots ring out. Virginia and her horse riding friends are back. They put a bullet through Logan’s head, along with his convoy.

Virginia has a WHOLE ARMY! She’s been watching the group. They want to be in business together. Virginia considers her group “like settlers“— not great language, considering colonialism destroyed the world already, and settlers stole Indigenous lands. She’s a white saviour, come to rescue everybody who can’t rescue themselves, supposedly. Of course they need the gas. “We only eliminate what is non–essential,” she tells them. The group won’t make gas for her army, so she’d rather kill them all. Luciana offers herself up. She’ll help make the gas, if Virginia allows the others to leave. A deal’s truck, though it doesn’t leave Luciana’s friends feeling all that happy as they pull out of there, leaving her behind.
A great episode. Some have been unhappy with the quality of Season 5’s back half so far particularly. Not Father Gore. But this episode is definitely taking things up a notch, which is not a bad thing in any way. Love that Logan’s end came, not because he wasn’t a good character, but because it’s pushing forward a whole other, larger, more intense narrative with the emergence of Virginia and her army.

“Today and Tomorrow” is next time.