‘Fear The Walking Dead’ Recap: “The Key”

It’s hard to believe we’re already four episodes into Fear the Walking Dead, and the season so far has been really strong. Here’s hoping it can keep up the momentum going into the fourth episode.

This episode opens up with John (Garret Dillahunt), who has a seriously nasty cavity. We see an average day for him, and see it repeated. The whole while a monologue plays, corresponding to a letter he’s writing for June (Jenna Elfman). He delivers it to Janis (Holly Curran) with a load of laundry and receives one in return. By the third day the person on guard duty before him doesn’t show up, prompting John to go investigate. As the narration explains how happy John is that they haven’t lost anyone they find the guard, Cameron (Noah Khyle), dead and turned into a walker. With no other choice, John ends him.

Then, after what feels like forever, we find Morgan (Lennie James). Daniel’s left him a shirt, and he has his dog sniff it. The whole scene is quite humorous as Morgan asks the dog how this works, how bloodhound works. It’s nice to see Morgan smile after everything.

Virginia actively prevents John from setting up a crime scene, blaming Cameron’s death on his drinking. She has the body taken away, despite John’s reluctance to let it go. After everyone clears out though, John finds something that looks like jewelry on the ground.

John experiences a reunion with Victor (Colman Domingo), and telling him what happened confesses he has doubts about Cameron’s death and Victor heads off to his meeting.

John visits Janis the next day, who thinks he’s there for a letter. Instead, he’s there to ask about Cameron. She doesn’t recognize the object he found, and this prompts John to speak to Virginia directly. He does his best to convince her that Cameron was murdered as opposed to drunk. She tells him a story about how someone was executed by walkers for murdering his friend. She agrees to double patrols.

The next scene finds us at Cameron’s funeral. He bonds with Dakota (Zoe Margaret Colletti), leading us to find out Cameron was usually with her whenever she’d leave Lawton. Virginia interrupts them though. Then we find Janis getting arrested, presumably trying to escape Lawton. They find the other piece of jewelry in her bag, and they lock her up.

She insists that it wasn’t her, and is convinced that Virginia planted it on her. Shocking no one, we learn that Janice was dating Cameron. She and Cameron have been planning on leaving Lawton for good and had been hoarding supplies for this purpose. John promises to do what he can.

John meets with Virginia and enjoys some toast with Strawberry jam. She thanks him for convincing him to double patrols. John wants to keep investigating but Virginia doesn’t seem particularly fond of the idea. She also informs John she’s been reading his letters and also tells him the contents were good, proving he believes in Lawton. She intends to make an example out of Janis.

As John leaves Virginia’s house he’s ambushed by Dakota, who tells him that he needs to keep investigating. John just can’t let it go and goes to dig up Cameron’s body. As he’s investigating it a couple of walkers drop into the grave forcing John to fight for his life and take the walkers out. He finds a broken shard of a knife handle in Cameron’s body.

He drags Victor to check it out, explaining to him that Cameron has his throat slit. Victor brings him to check the armory and they try to find who checked the specific knife out. The page has been ripped out of the ledger, to no one’s surprise. He intends to find the knife. Victor thinks it’s a bad idea.

John visits Janis in prison and tells her everything that’s going on. As he’s talking to Janice Virginia walks in, surprised to see John there. Victor covers for her, and then Janis confesses. She claims she pushed him into the fence and watched the Walkers eat him.

She tells John where she hid all the stuff for their escape, she wants him to escape so that he can be safe. John just wants to help but Janice has completely given up.

Jacob visits John, who is drinking, figuring John shouldn’t be alone. He informs John that Janis is set to be executed. John confesses he’s struggling with deciding to run away but decides to stay and free Janis. He tells Jacob a story of how his father took down a serial killer. When Jacob says his father was a hero, John confesses that his father planted the evidence and his father became untrustworthy on the police force. He claims it cost his father everything, and Jacob says that freeing Janice will cost a hefty price too. He knows if he does this he’ll never see June again.

Jacob wants to find another way, to buy more time to save her. John isn’t going for it. He gives the Rabbi a final letter for June and they hug before parting ways, with John resigned to his fate.

When John reaches the prison, Janis is already gone. He finds Janis dead, in the same way as Virginia described the execution earlier. They tied her to a tree with music playing so that the walkers would come for her, or so it seems. Instead, John finds the upper half of her body, she’s been turned into a walker. John does the merciful thing and blows her brains out. He sets a grave up for Janis.

John is on his way to kill Virginia, and the Rabbi and Victor try to stop him which causes a fight since Victor was somewhat involved. Victor says that he saved John, stopping him from going down the same path. John walks off, claiming that Lawton destroys everything.

John is promoted and given a key, just like Victor was but he’s obviously extremely conflicted about it all. June shows up at his door, she’s been transferred to Lawton. He heads into the bathroom to clean up but ends up ripping his tooth out, the cavity-ridden one.

We shift to Morgan, driving with his good boy. As he’s driving down he ends up getting hit by another vehicle, but luckily the dog is okay. Morgan also seems fine for the most part, perhaps an injured shoulder. He pulls his ax out and heads towards the other vehicle. The guy stumbles out of the car and Morgan inquires if it was an accident.

The guy asks Morgan where Emile is, with Morgan claiming Virginia knows. His buddy gets out the other side and tell Morgan they’re looking for a key and don’t know Virginia. It’s our two spray painting buddies! They attack Morgan, and Morgan kills one instantly, but the other jumps on him. Upon seeing the key around Morgan’s neck the other guy lunges and Morgan kills him too, which leaves him questioning what the key unlocks.

Fear The Walking Dead continues to impress with an exciting sixth season, and we can only hope Fear The Walking Dead keeps the excitement up. If it does, this season of Fear The Walking Dead might be the best one we’ve gotten so far.

If you want to see last week’s recap for the third episode, which focused on Dwight, you can do so here.