[Spoiler alert for Sunday’s “Anton” episode of Fear the Walking Dead.] No one’s gone until they’re gone… and Alicia Clark is gone. At least, that’s according to Troy Otto (Daniel Sharman), who returned from the dead to hammer out an old grudge against Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) on Fear the Walking Dead. Sunday’s midseason premiere of the final batch of Fear episodes ended with two shocking revelations for Madison: first, that she did not, in fact, kill Troy when she bludgeoned him with a hammer to the head back in season 3. And second, her daughter’s devastating fate: that Troy got his revenge by killing Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey).
When we last saw Alicia, she walked off into radioactive fallout to find survivors looking for PADRE before what she thought was her inevitable end: succumbing to fever from an infectious zombie bite. At some point during the seven-year time jump, the twisted Troy apparently tracked down Alicia and murdered her. Troy then handed over proof of death: a prosthetic, which Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) and Daniel Salazar (Rub?n Blades) recognized as the skeletal remains of Alicia’s amputated arm.
“I took it off her corpse after I killed her,” Troy told Madison, claiming that he left the undead and one-armed Alicia to roam as a walker. “I would’ve put her down, Madison. After all the wandering around I did in Mexico, I thought it was only right that Alicia should do the same. Maybe one day you’ll find her. Or maybe she’ll find you, or maybe not, and finish the job.”
What happened to Alicia? Is Alicia dead? Is Troy telling the truth? We asked these questions to showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg, with the duo confirming that all Alicia questions will be answered before Fear the Walking Dead ends with its Nov. 19 two-part series finale.
“Whether Troy is telling the truth is something that you’re just going to have to watch the rest of the season to find out,” Goldberg told ComicBook. Added Chambliss: “We will definitely find out whether or not Troy’s story is true, and what actually went down between Troy and Alicia.”
The episode ended with another question when Troy — taunting the Clark matriarch about Nick and Alicia — asked Madison: “What are you even fighting for?” Madison’s mission to rebuild PADRE is “about keeping something bigger alive,” she said. “My kids. I’m gonna build that place into what it should have always been, for them. For Alicia.”
“From the beginning of the series, everything for Madison has been about her family. It has been the drive for her from the beginning. Even when we learned about her in her darkest hour, and the things that she did while she was under PADRE’s thumb, even that was ultimately motivated by her children,” Goldberg explained. “I think as we get into the final episodes of the series, Madison’s in this place where she no longer has her own children and she’s wrestling with how she can honor them by this family at PADRE. Both the kids that are left behind in the wake of Madison taking over PADRE, but also the family that she has built along the way with all the characters that we all love. It really is just extrapolating her motivation for her kids and her family and applying it to this new family that she’s created.”
Fear the Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC and AMC+.
Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD (and find us on Facebook) and follow @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for more TWD Universe coverage.