Fear the Walking Dead
8×06: “All I See is Red”
Directed by Michael E. Satrazemis
Written by Andre Chambliss & Ian Goldberg

* For a recap & review of 8×05, click here.
* For a recap & review of 8×07, click here.
Morgan comes to after going wild and killing a bunch of zombies at the train. He swung his axe at Madison when she showed up, so she had to put him out. He’s only concerned now with finding Little Mo and he rages at Madison to get his axe back. She put it inside the train to make sure nothing crazy would happen. Morgan then sees all the writing on the walls of the train. “It means it‘s happening again,” he tells Madison. His PTSD is returning in a bad way. Madison doesn’t believe that means leaving him behind. Yet Morgan says all he does is kill when sees “red.” He insists that Madison isn’t safe around him right now. But she’s too tough to walk away from a friend.

The only thing flashing through Morgan’s mind are blood-soaked memories. He’s lost in them to the point he sees zombies everywhere instead of the actual people around him. He’s actually with Madison, Daniel, and the other group. He can’t calm himself down, even as Madison and Daniel try explaining that Little Mo is okay at the moment. Mo led people into the marshes once they were overcome at the containers. Morgan calls out over the radio and talks to his daughter, in hopes she’ll hear, and that she’ll listen. He explains that “the people you still have left” are those who can help ease the pain of losing those we love. Morgan’s determined to go after Mo, but Madison and the others tell him it isn’t safe for him to do it in his state. Madison feels responsible for Mo going to PADRE, so she wants to go instead of Morgan. The problem is they’re looking for a location that’s hard to find; one that Morgan knows. So, he’s got to go along anyway, and without his trusty weapon in hand.
Shrike needs Mo and the prefects to look for “geographical, meteorological, and topographical conditions to ensure” survival. It just so happens the military has taken care of this long ago. The coordinates to those places were held by Shrike’s father, whose shambling undead corpse is out there wandering around. At the same time, Mo yells at her father over the radio, insisting that she’s going on with the mission Shrike gave to her. This sends Morgan into a frenzy and when he comes to he’s in mud up to his chest. His axe is nearby; he obviously sunk it into one of Madison’s oxygen tanks. And there are walkers close, too. Morgan tries to talk to his daughter again over the radio and says she should run. His red, blood-soaked memories have not stopped.
Simultaneously, Dwight’s determined to go to the swamp and make sure Shrike dies. He wants to go alone. June says there isn’t much else she can do for Dwight’s boy at this point. She wants to go to the swamp instead and says that Dwight ought to stay with Sherry and their child; Finch needs his parents more than anyone else at the moment.

Morgan comes to when he’s stabbed by his daughter. She says he was in one of his frenzies. He urges it’s okay that she stabbed him. Morgan takes the radio and calls Madison, asking for them to come help him and Mo. He’s bleeding pretty badly; his wound is just above the heart. He tells his daughter to turn around and walk away. But his girl’s way too tough for that, just like Madison is too tough to give up on her friends. Morgan comes to again after another flash of red in his mind. Now, he’s inside the shack all over again with Mo, and the place is nearly full of water; he’s zip-tied to the door. Morgan says he’s going to “break the cycle” this time. He shoots off a flare and calls Madison so she can locate him. Unfortunately, Shrike cuts Madison off. Daniel and the angry parents show up quickly to get the upper hand. Yet the prefects are lurking, as well. It’s a proper standoff. Daniel orders Madison into the boat. He wants to try to get through to the prefects; he was once like them when he was young, likely back when he was drawn into the horrible work he did with the military. So, off Madison runs, and the gunfire erupts behind her.

Morgan makes Mo use a scuba tank to get out of the sinking shack, where now there are zombies clawing their way through the window. Good timing, too. One of the zombies is Krennick with the coordinates in his binoculars. Morgan tells Shrike over the radio that he’s going to be sure she never finds those coordinates. He gets his axe nearby and lets the blood-soaked terror in his head loose. He comes to once more on the shore and Madison’s already saved him from drowning. He rages, trying to go after Mo, but Madison tells him to relax before he gets himself killed. Madison reminds him: “You never really lose people. None of us do.” Then Shrike shows up with a gun pointed at Morgan, demanding to know where Krennick is, and a moment later, her dead father comes crawling out of the swamp water. It’s a an emotional moment for Shrike that finally ends with her father taking a big bite out of her neck. Madison kills Krennick, but the damage is done. She gets the coordinates out of the binoculars, as Shrike bleeds out and apologises to her father.
Daniel and the rebellion of parents are put on their knees by the prefects; they’re about to be executed. The prefers are prepared to shoot them all. They’re ordered to fire, but they don’t do it. Daniel tries talking to them, saying he wished somebody would’ve stopped him from becoming a killer when he was young. He says it will “haunt” them. Dove and Crane give the orders for the prefects to execute their hostages. But still, the prefects won’t do it. Morgan and Madison interrupt everything. They’ve brought the coordinates and offer them; they ask for nothing in return. They just want all the violence to end. Morgan says even his daughter can go. Dove and Crane think that Morgan’s lying, but Morgan says he’s found clarity. Morgan tells Mo about how losing so many people drove him to terrible things. He realises now, courtesy of Madison, that nobody is ever lost if we remember them: “They become a part of us,” he says. He only asks Mo to remember him, wherever she goes. Mo’s not ready to leave her father behind. She wants to be with him, not just in memory.

Shrike is not dead. She wakes up on June’s table in the train with a zombie head over her gnashing its teeth. Shrike asks for a higher dose of radiation, but June says it’s not her choice. June calls to Dwight and Sherry over the radio. Dwight’s about to call for Shrike to be tortured, however, Finch says “no one should ever feel this” and pleads with his father not to make Shrike feel such pain. So he tells June to make it fast and without pain. June reluctantly kills the zombie head. That’s when Crane comes to the train wanting to see Shrike, and June lets him, on the condition he does the job. June leaves them there weeping together.

Morgan and Mo decide to head off together. They say goodbye to Madison on the shore, as Mo leaves behind her prefect headgear, and the father-daughter duo head off on the water into the horizon. At the same time, Dwight and Sherry finally have to bury their boy Finch. Dwight doesn’t like putting the name PADRE gave his son on the cross above Finch’s grave whereas Sherry thinks Finch “made it his own.” Dwight thinks him and Sherry have to come to the end of their relationship. They’re starting to feel that them being together is a curse that only brings darkness into their lives. “Maybe we‘re just not meant to be together,” Dwight says. It’s not what Sherry wants to hear, yet she also doesn’t know what else to do. They’re both lost. Dwight believes they only end up hurting each other. Sherry hugs him, and then they go their separate ways. Really? After how long they searched for each other? Such an odd way to deal with things. Maybe Dwight’s just looking to run away. Maybe he’ll realise this isn’t the best thing for either of them. No life in the post-zombie apocalypse wasteland is an easy one to live. It’s a lot harder living in tough conditions without those you love.
Madison tells all the prefects and the rebellion of parents that there are files showing where their loved ones are, and they may be able to find some of them. It’s a way for her to make good for all she did, albeit mostly under extreme pressure, for PADRE. Elsewhere we see Morgan and Mo burying Grace properly. They put a marker over the grave, then they hug each other. Dad then gifts his daughter her own wooden staff. She’ll be as good as her father with it one of these days. Morgan has a few last words to say to Eastman, too. Most of all, he thanks him for everything the man taught him. After all’s said and done, he and his daughter are going to go look for Morgan’s old buddy, Rick Grimes. He calls on the radio to Rick. He says they’re going to Alexandria, whether he’s there or not. He hopes Rick might be listening, somewhere out there in the wasteland. Morgan thinks of all the people he’s lost along the way while he lays one hand on Grace’s grave, then he and Mo head off on their latest mission.

A radio blurts out messages. One of them is about PADRE no longer being a threat. Another one is a set of coordinates concerning the lost children from Madison. The person listening to the radio has Alicia’s artificial arm, too. Oh, man. What a cliffhanger for the mid-season finale.