Fear the Walking Dead season 4 episode 15 review: I Lose People

Alicia and Charlie reunite with old friends. Morgan debates his worthiness to survive. And Martha is definitely back for revenge.

A reunion. A sacrifice. A tasty beer recipe. A very likely road trip to Virginia.

In all honesty, this is a simplistic but somehow still fitting way to recap Fear the Walking Dead ‘s most recent episode, “I Lose People.” Despite a slow but steady build-up to what viewers, like myself, expected to be an action-packed episode was a sad and sappy letdown.

With this being the second to last episode of the season, there should have been so much more. And not just more action, but more revelations, more twists, more development. Instead, “I Lose People” may instead push loyal viewers to lose interest. Perhaps the writers want it that way, because this episode especially laid it on thick that most if not all the survivors from Fear will make their way over to The Walking Dead.

“I Lose People” wasn’t just heavy with foreshadowing; it was heavy with ridiculous and unrealistic saves throughout the episode.

We’ll start from the top, with Alicia and Charlie’s beach adventure turning into them miraculously finding  John and Strand. Alicia radios Morgan to let him know about the good news, only to learn he and several other friends are stuck on a hospital roof.

Here, we see a crack in June’s tough exterior. As much as the show puts these two together, it’s been obvious John has much stronger feelings for June… that is until now. When she learns he’s alive, June seems taken aback and breathless; this was one of the few character developments of the episode I enjoyed and found to be natural and enjoyable.

But it’ll be a minute before these two lovers can reunite. Morgan and Alicia each devise plans to rescue their friends. Alicia and Charlie go searching for anything that will help them float across the water without being attacked by the hungry gator who lurks beneath the surface. Morgan, with a little encouragement from June, shakes off his guilt if only momentarily to lead the group back through the hospital to escape.

Before they depart, Morgan and Sarah each offer sympathetic condolences to Jim. Sarah asks for Jim’s recipe, so that it can be shared and enjoyed by others long after he’s gone. The soon-to-be-deceased beer aficionadoo swiftly tells them off, whilst peeing off the side of the building. As Sarah says, Jim truly is a “jagoff.”

Morgan and the rest leave Jim to his pitiful end, and make their way back through the hospital hallways, only to discover most of the walker threat is gone thanks to a ceiling collapse. Al also took a few out, and leaves a note instructing any survivors to escape and hopefully they’ll meet again. If not, she wants them to continue her legacy of collecting stories and saving the ones she already has.

At this point, Morgan goes into extreme guilt mode (it won’t be the last time in this episode alone), telling June, Luciana and the others they should escape while he makes a distraction. Despite June’s protests, they eventually leave and Morgan returns to the rooftop to find a way to lead walkers away from the group.

While this pity party for both Jim and Morgan is going on, Alicia and Charlie hit a snag in their plan to find something to cross the flooded valley. Martha, who oh yes is very much alive and creepy as ever, was listening to Alicia on the radio, found her and Charlie, and is very eager to stop them from helping. As much as I feel bad for what happened to Martha — her whole backstory in “MM 54” was heartbreaking, to say the least — she has got to let it go. The woman is bleeding to death, and still trying to attack Morgan and anyone else in his crew.

It doesn’t take much for Alicia and Charlie to overpower Martha, taking her captive, and then magically find a SWAT car to drive through the water over to John and Strand. I’ll call this the first miracle.

The second comes shortly after, with Morgan having insanely good aim as he tosses a walker off the roof, hitting a car perfectly, so that its alarm goes off. How he made that shot and how that car, parked for who knows how long after the apocalypse, still had a running battery is unfathomable.

The third miracle? Morgan assumed he’d be stuck on the roof for good, and tells June over the radio that while he has way too many things to make up for, perhaps this sacrifice can give him peace. That isn’t necessary, because literally, everyone shows up to save Mo-Mo, all while declaring how much they love him. Oh and somehow they found a fire truck with a ladder to help Morgan down.

The final miracles? Morgan goes full-on Mission Impossible, climbs down the building, is nearly killed by a walker who breaks through a window to chomp on him, but is saved by John. John who is on the ground by the way. But hey, he’s a good shot so we have to believe this could happen, right? Morgan is able to then leap successfully onto the fire truck.

If this isn’t already the most unbelievable set of circumstances either The Walking Dead or Fear the Walking Dead has given us, Jim seals it with his sacrifice. Yes, Jim, who was being a massive jagoff jerk to everyone Jim. In his final breaths, he realizes he can do something heroic and brave, by taking a swan dive off the hospital, landing perfectly on another car to distract all the walkers.

Before he takes his life, Jim tells his perfect beer recipe to Sarah. As our survivors finally escape from the walker-ridden hospital, they decide on a name for Jim’s brew — Jimbo’s Beerbos. He’d have hated the name, and thus, it’s perfect.

What seals the deal on “I Lose People,” what any of us should have seen coming a mile away, was Morgan’s Virginia pitch as they drive off into the sunset. Now that most everyone has reunited — they still have to find Al — the Fear cast can most likely end their series and show up on Rick’s doorstep (that is if the timelines work out and Rick’s still alive by the time they get there).

Despite everything seeming like a happily ever after ending for our crew, there is one big issue that could take everyone down in the series finale. Martha.

Martha was being held captive, but with the Mo-Mo love fest and miraculous car alarms going off, she escaped. And we can definitely expect her to come back, at least one last time, to try and take a few of our survivors out. It wouldn’t be a Walking Dead finale if that didn’t happen, right?

Undead Afterthoughts

• Best reunion that happened during this episode? John Dorie and his hat.
• Speaking of hats, has anyone noticed the strange similarity between Carl Grimes wearing Rick’s sheriff’s hat and Charlie donning John’s hat?
• Best romantic line: “I had a Black Jack for you but I ate it.”
• Best line, in general: “She didn’t use the C word. She went for the whole quesadilla.” Can we please not let anything happen to Sarah? I need her to meet Rick and the rest of the TWD crew first, especially Ezekiel’s BFF Jerry.