Fear the Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 14, “Divine Providence,” was an intense, action-packed episode that was also incredibly frustrating to watch. Strand flip-flopped so many times in the episode, I almost felt like I was getting whiplash. Only Daniel’s scenes saved the episode. Here’s a review of the episode, along with a look at fan reactions.
This is a review of Fear the Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 14, “Divine Providence,” as shown on AMC Plus. So there will be MAJOR spoilers below.
How Many Times Can Strand & Alicia Change Their Minds?
While last week’s episode was a big improvement in quality for the show, this week’s brought us right back to where we started in the second-half of this season. Character motivations were all over the map, especially Strand’s. One minute, Strand wants to trap Alicia at the Tower and leave all her friends “stranded” (haha) on that platform, waiting to die. The next minute, he says he loves Alicia like a daughter, trusts her completely, and is going to give her friends a free pass and end the war. Then just a few minutes later, when he’s about to turn off the light and allow her friends to enter the Tower, he changes his mind again and decides his only option is to be completely evil and fight Alicia in hand-to-hand combat (basically.) And then he’s trying to save Alicia’s life again.
But Alicia’s not really that different. She has every reason to hate Strand since he killed her semi-boyfriend Will for absolutely no good reason at all. Strand’s a loose cannon who murdered Howard, even though Howard was always loyal to him. But Strand still wins her over while they’re fighting their common enemy (Wes.) Then at the very end, when Strand hesitates to shut down the light, Alicia admits that she’s so angry at him that she’ll never forgive him. But it’s not because of Will.
She’s angry at Strand because of WES… Because Strand killed Wes, who was hunting them down for the entire episode and trying to kill them.
That part of the dialogue just made me really angry. It would have made sense for her to still be talking about Will. But instead she talks about Wes of all people?
Meanwhile, Wes’s storyline could have been so much better too. All of Strand’s men switched over to follow Wes super fast, which didn’t make sense. If they had written the story where most switched but a few remained loyal, even that would have been better. Also, Wes was angry because he would “never trust Alicia.” This also made no sense. If Wes was taking over because Strand killed Howard and thus was too crazy to trust, I’d get it. I’d get most of Strand’s men following his lead too. But over not trusting Alicia?
It’s not clear why Wes hates Alicia so much. Wes was part of the group that Al took away in the helicopter, and he was really mad at Ofelia. But he didn’t have a lot of bad interactions with Alicia. I thought they got along pretty well before she was put in the bunker. 🤷♀️
Most of this episode consisted of character motivations that made little sense except to move the plot forward. And that disappointed me.
By the way, the comment above from Reddit makes a lot of sense.
And sadly, so does this one:
Daniel Saved the Episode
The only exception is Daniel. His storyline was the best part of the episode. The way he realized that Charlie was like a daughter to him, so he needed to straighten up in order to be there for her last days was really touching. He couldn’t be there for Ofelia, but he could be there for Charlie now.
His absolute savagery is also enjoyable to watch because it makes sense. He worked for the CIA. He was a cold-blooded killer at one point. It’s no surprise that he can fall back to that training and say crazy lines like “it’s never too late to learn new things” while killing someone. His character makes sense.
Overall, I loved the Daniel scenes but I was disappointed in the rest of the episode. I hope Madison’s return is handled better.
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