Fear the Walking Dead
8×02: “Blue Jay”
Directed by Heather Cappiello
Written by Andrew Chambliss & Ian Goldberg

* For a recap & review of the Season 8 premiere, click here.
* For a recap & review of 8×03, click here.
Things certainly haven’t been easy for June since last we saw her. She’s been trying to warn anybody else she can about PADRE. She puts up makeshift signs using anything she can find, leaving them on trees to tell people PADRE is a lie and PADRE steals peoples’ children. She has a radio to keep track of any PADRE activity. Someone comes through talking about “an egg” and the potential of “a whole nest.” Thankfully, June is pretty well equipped. She uses a dart gun to take out the incoming PADRE collectors seeking more children to steal, then she cuts off one of the men’s fingers. She’s not just collecting gear and weapons, she’s sending messages. Back at June’s shelter she has a ton of guns stashed away, along with a bunch of fingers in a jar.

Later, June hears more PADRE activity. After that we see her emptying new fingers into the jar. Suddenly someone bursts into her cabin. The guy’s name is Adrian (Jonathan Medina). He’s looking for his daughter Hannah who was taken by PADRE collectors years ago. He’s been following June; he needs her help. Trust is the obvious barrier here. It doesn’t help that this dude just barged right into the cabin, either. June advises Adrian to leave and not come back. He pulls out a photo of his daughter to show June, trying anything he can to gain her sympathy and her trust. Is it all made up? Or is this yet another lost parent out there seeking their child? Adrian says they’ve got “a whole army” of people who’ve had children stolen. June says they’ll never get their children back because PADRE uses the people you love against you. And she finally runs Adrian out, even though he promises to come back eventually.
That night, June loads up her jar of fingers, grabs a few things and a weapon, then she heads out. In the daylight, we see June continuing the process of knocking out more PADRE collectors and bringing them ashore to steal their gear/fingers. She kills one of them. It’s not part of the process when she sees Dwight and Sherry underneath the masks. She also finds a child onboard. The kid, Finch (Gavin Warren), holds June at gunpoint and calls back to PADRE. June gets her gun back, just as Sherry and Dwight come back to consciousness. Turns out that Finch may have appendicitis and they have to get him to a clinic. No time now: June will have to do the procedure, regardless of whether she has the necessary tools; Dwight says he’ll tell PADRE who the finger snatcher is if she doesn’t do it. And you know June’s not going to refuse helping a child.

Ah, now I understand: the PADREs all call walkers by the name of “carrion,” since they’re totally obsessed with bird-related names. We also discover that Finch is Dwight and Sherry’s child; PADRE doesn’t know what’s going on, and neither does Finch know that the two of them are his parents. Even if the children are perfectly ‘safe’ at PADRE, is it really a life when everybody’s so hopelessly disconnected? Not quite. The biggest problem out in the post-zombie apocalypse wasteland are the people; everything else is just hard work. At PADRE, it’s a soulless, mechanical existence, and that’s not genuine living, no matter how you slice it.

The group get to a facility on a train where June’s able to prepare for the surgery on Finch. She gives the kid some medicine to put him out and puts an IV in to help dull the pain. Sherry gets a look at some horrific files that were tracking the progress of some awful disease/wounds. She wants June to tell her about it, but they agree: “No questions.” They’re interrupted by Adrian, who lets off a bullet that fucks up the power, which makes it difficult to do surgery. This means Dwight has to turn on a backup so that June can help Finch. Only problem is the train’s full of the undead. The place was used by PADRE and June was made to do experiments. PADRE was trying to see if it was possible to stop the infection from walker bites; radiation was the key. June ran from PADRE because she refused to keep doing worse and worse experiments as commanded by Shrike. Right now, more walkers are starting to come for the train after the gunshot, too.
While Dwight and Sherry go to turn on the backup together, Adrian keeps trying to convince June to help him and his friends do something bigger than just cutting off fingers. He asks June: “What exactly are you living for?” The power comes back on after a moment. Dwight and Sherry start making their way back over the top of the train. They have a little time to argue about the state of things. Sherry wants to get free and be a family with Finch properly. She wants to escape and then tell people the truth about PADRE. Dwight recognises, like Sherry, that PADRE’s starting to remind them of the Sanctuary, back when things were very, very bad. And then, the train car collapses, sending Dwight and Sherry into the ruined interior where there are all sorts of zombies lurking. This necessitates gunfire. Eventually, Dwight and Sherry are trapped. They call to June, who wants to come help, but Dwight insists she go ahead and help Finch. Yet June doesn’t want to promise she’ll take care of Finch if Dwight and Sherry don’t make it back. She’d rather come try to help.

The train cars are like a big haunted house, filled with some zombies roaming free and others still chained to where they were being experimented on, forever locked into the site of their torture. June apologises to them as she walks past, remembering what she took part in with PADRE. She makes it to the end of one car but the door’s locked, and the undead are desperate to get at her, starting to pull free of their bonds. It leaves June no choice but to take out her gun and start firing. She ends up on the ground in a bad position when Adrian shows up to save the day. And along comes Finch, as well.
They’re able to save Dwight and Sherry. This necessitates a conversation between the parents and Finch; they reveal the truth to the boy, even if it’s a lot to understand. They tell Finch they’re not going back to PADRE and they’re going to be a family. Right now, they’ve got to get Finch back to be operated on. They’re in the right place and right time for Adrian to also find out his daughter Hannah is one of the zombies in the train. Apparently June treated Hannah for asthma once. The girl got a zombie bite and June gave her the treatment she developed with PADRE. Not something Adrian’s prepared to hear. Shrike wouldn’t allow June to help Hannah any further, which is why the girl remains zombified on the train. None of that matters to Adrian, whose hope is all gone. He walks into the train car with his little girl and lets her bite him, becoming food for a horde of zombies. A horrifying death.
At least it looks like young Finch’s surgery has gone well. June stitches the child up and tells the parents their boy is in stable condition. Dwight and Sherry want June to go with them. They want to “try and be a family,” which includes June. They don’t want her to rot away out there with nobody, isolated in the woods. Dwight owes a lot to June and John, so he feels like it’s only right that June is part of his family now. It seems like maybe June’s ready, after all this time, to be part of a family; that’s what she tells them, anyway. Out of nowhere, PADREs arrive with Shrike and June gets knocked out.
Shrike was the original one who had their finger cut off. She knew it was June who was taking fingers right away. She goes on about “saving lives” and “protecting the future of PADRE.” We hear June’s bird name: Blue Jay. We also hear about a new expansive plan coming from PADRE. And now, Shrike tells June they’ll have to start experimenting again. They bring out a zombie head and position it closer and closer to Finch, preparing to let the child be bitten; so much for protecting the children. And the zombie chews into Finch’s shoulder. Goddamn! Dwight threatens Shrike’s life, as he and Sherry are taken away. Shrike tells Blue Jay to start working. More “new patients” are coming. Before that, Blue Jay has her index finger removed with no pain meds to dull the bodily violence.

In the back of a truck, Madison and Morgan are being transported together. They have more than enough time for a chat. Morgan’s stuck in the past and Madison insists that he has to move on so he can help his daughter. That’s when Madison starts to have an attack, unable to breathe. She falls to the floor and Morgan shouts for the PADREs to stop. The PADREs pull Madison up to get her a tank of oxygen and she wrestles them out of the truck, giving Morgan a chance to run for it.