Fear the Walking Dead Season 7B just premiered on Sunday, April 17, and fans couldn’t stop dunking on the midseason premiere. While Paul (played by Warren Snipe) put a lot of heart into his character, the plotline for Season 7 Episode 9 left many fans disappointed and confused. Many commented that they had expected more from the midseason launch, and were left concerned about what to expect in the rest of the season.
This article has spoilers for Season 7 Episode 9 of Fear the Walking Dead.
There Were A Lot of Plotholes & Strange Motivations in the Midseason Premiere
The episode, called “Follow Me,” was about Alicia and a new character named Paul. Paul is a musician who’s gone deaf and lost his wife in the nuclear explosions that rocked Texas. He found Alicia passed out and brought her back to his home, nursing her back to health.
Alicia’s had a raging fever that sometimes leaves her delusional, and she’s been convinced that she still has the zombie virus coursing through her veins even though she chopped off her arm. In The Walking Dead universe, there’s really no way that’s the case. She would have died and turned by now unless she’s harboring some crazy immunity that’s never been seen before. Instead, she is going slowly insane, driven in part by this recurring fever.
She’s harboring a lot of regret about leading a group of people from her bunker to their deaths while she followed a zombie that she thought would lead her to Padre. Now one of the survivors wants her dead, in some strange obsession to kill her no matter what the cost.
Paul convinces her that she’s not crazy (which is weird, because she obviously is.) In the end, he dies and she returns to Morgan’s submarine, convinced that her new calling in life is to abandon finding Padre and create her own Padre. But only by luring survivors to her and getting a lot of them killed in an attempt to take over Victor Strand’s tower. To me, this basically indicates that she didn’t learn anything from the people who died following her zombie, because she’s kind of making the same mistake all over again. And Morgan’s going along with it.
Check Out These Fans’ Disappointed Reactions
Anyway, fans couldn’t help but point out a lot of plotholes in the episode and things that just really annoyed them to no end. Here are some of the comments that were shared on Fear the Walking Dead’s subreddit. The subreddit has become a gathering place for fans who are really disappointed with the show, and find comfort in the funny comments shared in show discussion threads.
u/bloodyturtle wrote, “the characters in this show don’t even have relationships with each other anymore, they just vent to a new character about their emotional baggage and then that person dies 5 minutes later.”
Elveszett agrees with my assessment that Alicia is crazy, writing: “I mean, Alicia wears a skeleton arm for some reason, I assume she’s gone too crazy to have a normal relationship by now.”
When they were hiding in the car and the zombies lost interest, this was quite the opposite of what we’ve seen before. And Explodedbagel agreed, writing, “Kinda chuckled at how the zombies surrounding the car they took shelter in immediately lost interest and got bored over the course of a short monologue discussion. Normally that’s a pretty serious hard to escape conundrum in this universe.”
Others commented that they got bored and wandered off during that scene too.
Then there was the whole soundproofing plothole. Paul was convinced his home was soundproofed. But soundproofing consisted of having mattresses in front of windows?
Some viewers called it a “filler episode.” And many are upset that some of the more minor characters have had their interactions sacrificed in lieu of bringing on one-episode-only characters who die at the end.
And Pfdfour is wondering why people don’t just move to irradiated areas and start over there. Why is Alicia obsessed with Strand’s tower, stuck in the middle of a radiated zone?
Pfdfour wrote, “Why don’t they just go somewhere else? It seems like characters visit non irradiated zones all the time. So why is Strands tower the only option?”
OakIslandCurse suggested Alicia’s obsession with Strand is blinding her. I’d say the same for Morgan too. But what about everyone else?
Then there was that scene where Paul’s radio was broken. But why did he bring it outside in the first place?
Opreston replied, “Babes you’re asking ‘why’ questions for FTWD. You’re not gonna get an answer that makes sense.”
And then there was the walkie-talkie being given to a deaf character. Or Paul’s plan to blast music and attract walkers, only to not have a plan beyond that besides simply killing them.
What exactly was the plan anyway? And why are the extra characters always perfectly happy with dying?
Lexjude is disappointed that Paul died, and I agree. That actor really put his heart into his role, even if his lines weren’t so great. I wish he could have stuck around.
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