Fear the Walking Dead season 8, episode 10 recap: “Keeping Her Alive”

With only three episodes left of Fear the Walking Dead, “Keeping Her Alive” leaves much to be desired. After the previous episode “No Sanctuary”, I was expecting a much more entertaining and heightened episode.

This doesn’t leave a lot of promise for the remaining two episodes. At this point, I just don’t see how Fear the Walking Dead can go out in a good way.

They are wasting far too much time on repeated tropes. Nevertheless, let’s dive into season 8 episode 10.

This episode is all about testing Strand’s leadership and seeing how much he has changed. Right off the bat, June comes into PADRE acting as if she owns the place.

She wants to take Tracy back to Troy in exchange for security. Victor thinks that keeping Tracy at PADRE is the perfect leverage to keep Troy from attacking and taking over the island.

Dwight and June think the opposite, believing it could be the perfect reason to attack. But Strand does make a very good point, currently Troy does not know where the island is.

June has become increasingly annoying this last season. I get her anger with Strand, but she too has done some things to get people killed, and Victor calls her on it.

The bickering, back and forth about who has changed for the better and who hasn’t, got old quickly. Neither have a superior footing in this matter.

June plans to take Tracy and her captor Victor, to Troy and hopes that will be enough to keep him off of PADRE. June is naive in thinking that will be enough.

Once again Victor is correct. Those people don’t know Troy the way he does.

With or without a daughter to protect, revenge is always on his mind.

Fear the Walking Dead season 8, episode 10 recap: He’s a sociopath on a revenge tour

Directly following the events at PADRE, June and her posse have Strand and Tracy on the boat. June calls out to Troy on the radio and wants to hand his daughter over, if they can make an accommodating deal for both parties.

They keep Tracy blindfolded so she can’t reveal to Troy PADRE’s location. Strand and Tracy keep bickering about Troy.

Tracy thinks her father will do anything to protect her, but Strand knows once they are handed over, Troy will kill him and hurt her. June makes one of the dumbest comments of the entire episode to Victor, when she asks if you can change but Troy cannot.

Has she never heard the story of Troy? June offers up the deal of Victor and Tracy in exchange for leaving PADRE alone.

He can have the hotel and won’t be bothered. At first, he didn’t want to make that trade but when June revealed that Madison was no longer leading PADRE, his attitude toward wanting to take it flipped.

Fear the Walking Dead season 8, episode 10 recap: Remember the Lighthouse

Strand finds himself in a situation where he must act fast or it’s imminent death. He rips Tracy’s blindfold off so she can see their surroundings.

It was a smart move that June can only blame herself for. With Tracy’s knowledge of the lighthouse, she becomes too much of a liability to take back to Troy.

Both Strand and Tracy jump into the water to free themselves. Strand takes Tracy to the one person he thinks can help them both.

Meanwhile, Madison is rocking out to some tunes and hammering down some of the dead before Strand walks in to kill her high.

Madison’s goal, as predicted, was to look for Alicia. Her only purpose now is to put her kids to rest; the way that they deserve.

Tracy, like most children in the apocalypse, is extremely annoying but she’s not your average child. And Troy is no father of the year.

He has told her all of Madison’s crimes: killing his father and leaving him for dead at the dam. Tracy claims Troy has told her everything but it’s obvious he has left out his crimes in the story.

Strand believes that Tracy can help Madison find Alicia, in return they will keep her alive. He swears it’s not just about saving him but saving Tracy as well.

This allows them all to have a chance to get what they want. The only problem is Tracy is more like her dad than they ever could have imagined.

They make it to one of Luciana’s truck stops and force Tracy to show them where Troy killed Alicia. Something doesn’t sit right with me.

I don’t think Alicia is even dead.

Luciana tries to stand in their way. She doesn’t want them traveling on her roads and have Troy thinking they had something to do with this.

She’s got her people to protect, as she keeps saying over and over like a broken record. Daniel talks Luciana down and wants to get to the bottom of this.

He tells Luciana to set up a defensive perimeter, while he goes with them. But this is much more about revenge on Troy than it is about getting good intel.

Fear the Walking Dead season 8, episode 10 recap: “You’re Daniel Salazar”

Daniel has no patience when it comes to Tracy. And yet again Tracy magically knows all about Daniel.

“Did Daddy also tell you why I want to kill him?” Daniel remarks back to her. Strand becomes more and more protective over Tracy, which gets on my nerves with each passing second.

I get his will to want to change but it feels like overkill. Tracy tells Daniel that his daughter died because she tried to poison a lot of innocent people.

After some awkward silence, Daniel turns back to her and says, “Well my daughter Ofelia died because your lunatic father led a herd of the dead to destroy his settlement. She died fighting to defend it. She died because of your father.”

I cheered when Daniel put this kid in her place. If she’s tough enough to go toe-to-toe with adults, then she’s tough enough to learn the truth about her father.

Victor tries to do the right thing and protect Tracy from Daniel, when he realizes this is Daniel’s revenge tour against Troy. Madison and Daniel end up kicking Strand out of the car and ditching him.

Nothing is putting a stop to her from finding Alicia, not even her best friend. Tracy leads them to some frozen ground that holds a stuck herd.

Tracy tells her that Alicia is in the herd. Now Troy tells Madison that he didn’t know where Alicia was, and Tracy tells Madison that was a lie.

But which is the actual lie?

Fear the Walking Dead season 8, episode 10 recap: Alicia’s groupies

Just when you think things can’t get weirder, it does. After getting booted, Strand finds refuge with Alicia Clark’s cult.

They claim that Alicia told them stories of Strand before Troy killed her. They briefly knew Alicia and now act and dress like her to, “keep her alive.”

Alicia saved them all in different ways, so to honor her they have somehow become a version of her. They became a symbol of hope, going from one place to another to save people.

They want people to believe that Alicia is still out there helping, to keep the hope alive while they keep her memory intact. There were more members of Alicia’s groupies that Troy supposedly killed along with Alicia.

Luciana with the help of Dwight, Sherry, Dove, and her men, block Troy and his group from getting onto her road to track down Tracy. Luci had every intention of letting him pass if he didn’t cause trouble.

But Troy will always be Troy. They planned on taking what they wanted from Luciana in the process, so it quickly became a showdown that Troy didn’t want to run from.

Not even for his daughter. Ultimately it became too big of a risk, and he had to ask Victor to make sure his daughter was safe since he, all of a sudden, became the only one who cared about Tracy’s safety.

Fear the Walking Dead season 8, episode 10 recap: We are all Alicia

Tracy leads Madison into the herd where Alicia is supposed to be. It all comes down to the moment.

A walker who looks like Alicia from behind… Madison thinks it’s her, but she realizes it’s not.

When she’s caught off guard Tracy tries to push her into it to be bitten. “You killed her,” Tracy repeats.

The dead was her mother and she wanted Madison to pay for her crimes, all the while her father never paid for his. Madison is still confused as she’s never met this child’s mother.

Tracy claims her mother believed what Madison believed, that no one’s gone until they’re gone. And that is the reason why her mother is dead.

Well, that’s a far cry from murdering someone.

Daniel thinks they should still use Tracy to get to Troy. They will have to end this somehow.

But Madison knows the risk she poses. She knows where PADRE is and the only way to protect the island is to get rid of her now.

Tracy is tied to a tree by Daniel and gets a little taste of her own medicine. She begs them for mercy and cries out where Alicia is, at an old mansion off Route 26 near Fort Worth.

Madison doesn’t believe her, and it still won’t keep her from protecting PADRE from Troy. But Victor comes in to save Tracy like he promised Troy.

As annoying as it may be, it could help them with Troy in the long run. Tracy breaks free from them, and Strand introduces the cult to Madison, who has come to help.

They say Alicia wouldn’t want her to die like this no matter where she is. That’s a lot of wisdom for only knowing Alicia for five minutes.

Troy never stood down, even when Victor was going to bring his daughter back to him. He barreled through Victor and Frank’s men anyway to get through to the roads and destroyed Luci’s outpost.

Troy just made the war a whole lot bigger. He doesn’t care how many of his men he gets killed, he has a herd to fight for him and it’s how he will try to take PADRE, just like he did at the ranch.

He just unleashed an even greater war. His daughter is not his priority and he has no business raising one.

Madison knows she has to finish this fight on her own. She can’t allow her feud with Troy to get any more people killed.

She was also willing to end Tracy’s life but she had no more people left to disappoint. Her will to keep PADRE in safe hands has clouded her morals at this point.

Alicia may be gone but she should still want to be someone people can look up to. Luci promised Madison she would take her out to Forth Worth and see if Tracy was lying or not.

She probably was but Alicia is worth the risk. There are only two more episodes left before we reach our final goodbye in Fear the Walking Dead, which both air next Sunday, November 19.

Though this has become a wild treasure hunt for Alicia’s corpse, it won’t be long before we see her fate. Tune in on AMC and AMC Plus to find out how it all ends, as we say goodbye to the Clark family once and for all.

What did you think of Fear the Walking Dead season 8 episode 10? How do you think the series will end?

Watch Fear the Walking Dead on AMC.