Fear the Walking Dead season 4 episode 10 review: Close Your Eyes

Alycia Debnam-Carey as Alicia Clark – Fear the Walking Dead _ Season 4, Episode 10 – Photo Credit: Ryan Green/AMC

While seeking refuge from the storm outside, Alicia is confronted by her past and the difficult choice of how to forgive and move forward.

Last we saw Alicia, she was fleeing from Morgan, off to find shelter as a major storm approached. In “Close Your Eyes,” Alicia is for all intents and purposes stuck in a house with the absolute last person she’d want to be around — her brother’s killer, Charlie.

When Alicia first comes across this house, she swiftly takes out the walkers that were once the family who lived here. She lays them outside in the mud, and there’s a moment of symbolism, where the dead, and the photos of the happy family inside, represent the happy family Alicia once had and now, everyone is gone. She’s the only one left.

Alicia is unable to leave due to the high winds and torrential rainfall, as she found out when she tried to get away from Charlie once she learned she was in the house. There was a car outside, but a strong gust of wind knocks her off her feet and unconscious.

With these two now stuck in the same place, the episode centers on Alicia facing her losses and her demons, and Charlie coming to terms with her emotional baggage and guilt.

Something worth noting is while I watched the show last night, I noticed a massive amount of viewers on social media just tearing Charlie down. While Charlie’s past actions were beyond horrible and understandably unforgivable, we can’t forget she is a child who in many ways was influenced by the group she was around — the Vultures. As both Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead have shown us, no one is innocent and when it comes to kids, ah, yea they definitely make mistakes in the apocalypse.

Looking at Charlie, she’s lost her Vulture family, and she knows her actions have caused grief and anger for Alicia and the others due to the loss of Madison and Nick. Watching her be mute for almost the first half of this episode, I noticed a similarity between Charlie’s silence and that of John Dorie’s when he lived in his cabin. After shooting and killing a robber, and feeling massive guilt over it, Dorie lived in solitude. It wasn’t until June (then Laura) came along that he was able to reconnect with another person and then humanity again.

Charlie hasn’t found this yet — this reason to want to go on. And interestingly enough in this episode, it is Alicia — the sister of the man she murdered — that may give her that.