‘Fear The Walking Dead’ Season 7, Episode 11 Review: Ofelia

Fear The Walking Dead has set up one of the most preposterous conflicts to-date in this show. As silly as last season’s showdown with Teddy was—culminating in the nuclear missiles launching—this season is worse.

For reasons that none of us can possibly comprehend, the “heroes” of our show are obsessed with taking or destroying the tower from Strand rather than just leaving the nuclear wasteland of Texas behind.

Strand (Colman Domingo) meanwhile, has been recast as an egomaniacal villain, shedding his rogue’s personality for that of a tinpot dictator who happily tosses innocent people to their death and hires contract killers to off children. It’s as though the people responsible for writing this show don’t understand the characters at all.

Speaking of character assassinations, this episode focused almost entirely on two long-time characters who have been treated worse in the past few seasons than almost anybody in the sprawling—though perhaps finally dwindling—cast: Daniel (Ruben Blades) and Luciana (Danay Garcia).

Along with Wes (Colby Hollman) the two are off on a little adventure in this week’s episode, ‘Ofelia.’ It’s a mixed bag of an episode, not as bad as most of this season’s episode (and not as bad as next Sunday’s) but still a pretty major misfire. That’s in keeping with the rest of Season 7, which is quickly shaping up to be Fear’s very worst.

Basically, Morgan and his people are trying to secure a weapons cache that can help them take down Strand and his infinite supply of rangers. But Daniel wanders off, convinced that the picture of a boat in a memory card game he and Luciana were playing, is a clue to his missing daughter’s whereabouts.

Ofelia, of course, died way back in Season 3 in one of the more tragic moments this show has seen. As Daniel’s memory fails him, his grip on reality also starts to slip. He’s convinced his daughter is still alive and needs his help.

For a while now, the showrunners have been reviving Daniel’s gradual slide into dementia—something we first glimpsed back in Season 2. This has real potential to be an interesting story element, but it feels largely squandered here, though again this was, in my opinion, one of the better episodes this season.

What I liked:

The Spanish

I liked all the Spanish! Early on, Fear headed to Mexico and we had a lot of Spanish and Mexican culture and that was a nice contrast to the flagship show. Even when they headed back to the US, Season 3 was largely about the racial tension between a group of white survivalists and a Native American tribe, before heading back to Mexico and the dam.

Beginning in Season 4 these things were tossed out entirely. Yes, we still have a multiracial cast, but any effort at actually dealing with race, racism, cultural differences, etc. has been abandoned. So even though we don’t really get back to that in ‘Ofelia’ at least we get some Spanish!

Daniel and Luciana and Wes

We also get Luciana and Daniel actually being part of a story with lines and an actual arc. I’ll get into what doesn’t work in a bit, but I have to say I like where Luciana went in the end. After Daniel kills Arno, she lies to him and tells him that Ofelia is actually in the tower with Strand. She’s manipulating his mental condition and it’s honestly kind of horrible, though she’s doing it for a ‘good cause.’

Wes calls her out. Actually, Wes kind of calls everybody out, including Strand and Alicia, and even Morgan. “People suck,” he tells Luciana before letting her know that he includes her in that verdict. Later, he goes to the tower to make a deal with Strand.

Luciana is almost not able to convince Daniel of her lie. It reminded me a bit of Batteries Not Included. In that movie, the old woman in the apartment building is convinced that the bad guy is her son. She’s so convinced of this the entire movie no matter what he does—until he’s remorseful and visits her in the hospital and actually pretends to be her son. Then she realizes he isn’t. Daniel, when confronted with Luciana finally telling him that he’s right, that Ofelia is alive, almost doesn’t go along with it.

(The problem with all of this is that Luciana is doing this to convince Daniel to help take down Strand which is kind of silly given he has dementia!)

Arno

I’m bummed out that they killed Arno (file that in my dislikes) because I started to really like him this episode. He’s just a leader of people who cares about them and is trying his best to get them to safety. He’s justifiably pissed off that Alicia had them all follow around a “talking zombie” to find some mythical ‘Padre’.

I’m still not sure why they wouldn’t all just make common cause? Why has Arno been setup as this secondary villain when he and Alicia and Morgan all want the same thing?

What I didn’t like:

Arno’s Group

Here’s the part of the episode that made absolutely zero sense to me. After Daniel feeds Arno to the zombies and slits the throat of one of Arno’s lieutenants in cold blood, Luciana appeals to the remaining people in Arno’s group.

Come fight with us to take down Strand and get the tower, she pleads. Follow my boy Daniel here who not only suffers from dementia, but just killed your leader by feeding him to zombies and a young man who seemed like a nice guy by slitting his throat because he went along with Arno’s lies. You can trust us!

This would be like if Negan showed up and killed Abraham and Glenn and then was like ‘But guys, seriously, we need to fight this other worse bad guy who hasn’t ever done anything to you guys really come follow me!’ and Rick’s group was all just docile and okay with it.

Mind you, Luciana convinces Arno’s group to follow them despite being vastly outnumbered. So it would be like if Negan and just two other people showed up, killed Glenn and Abraham, and then convinced Rick’s group to not only not retaliate, but to join forces.

And this is a group were formerly led by Teddy, a psychopathic serial killer and doomsday prophet. Surely they’re not this meek?

But no, no. Fear The Walking Dead’s writers and showrunners are all about whatever’s convenient to the plot. Whether or not it makes sense is way, way down their totem pole of priorities. This is a doomsday cult of soft, pliable, milquetoast sheep.

Back at the submarine, Dwight and Sherry and Morgan have found the weapon cache—several bags of assault rifles, apparently—and happily welcome Arno’s people when Luciana shows up with them. Nobody wonders why they didn’t make common cause earlier given their aligned goals. No bad blood seems to exist—“you hurt some of our people” Luciana tells them in her speech, “and we hurt some of yours” by which, of course, she means we just brutally murdered two of yours. This would have been a good moment for a timely double cross,. actually. Oh well.

Overall, not as terrible as the last few episodes but a far, far cry from good. Luciana is still essentially an undefined character. It’s remarkable she’s still alive, honestly, though she remains a mere husk of her former self. Gone is the Luciana of the desert, the chief badass in her community of survivors in Mexico. She’s long since become nothing more than a symbol of Nick’s absence.

Daniel, meanwhile, is just sad to watch. I would have preferred they kept him a stone cold badass like he was in Season 3. We already dealt with his mental health arc back in Season 2, and dredging it back up just feels like a convenient way to sideline his character 99% of the time.

Arno and Wes I enjoyed, however. Wes for calling out everyone’s BS and then going to the tower to “make a deal” with Strand; Arno for being an actually decent leader and person who could have been a cool new addition to the regular cast. Honestly the moment I started realizing how likable he actually was I should have known they were going to off him.

What did you think of this episode? I’ve watched next Sunday’s already and I have to warn you, it gets much worse.

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