Pablo & Jessica – With everyone reunited, Madison seeks to bring all the hotel survivors together in fortifying the hotel with a risky plan to clear all the walking dead out in one go. Meanwhile, an idea from Nick sees his stature rise within his new community, especially with Luciana.
The title directly references the biggest theme: letting go of the past. Pablo is Luciana’s brother now confirmed as lost while Jessica is (or was) the bride of the hotel wedding that her husband Oscar has been keeping contained in the honeymoon suite. They’re both literal representations of a former life that the characters are respectively clinging onto but must now accept the loss This is best explored with Oscar at the hotel with the help of Strand.
The story utilises Strand’s own history well of having recently lost his lover Thomas; his story is the same as Oscar’s, just a chapter ahead. In the climax, the pair has the best exchange of the entire episode as they reflect over losing a loved one permanently changing you as a person, “The person that comes after”. That even if it’s a change for the worse, it’s still one that must be accepted. There’s common ground with Luciana as we similarly see Nick helping her through receiving the news but her lesser reaction speaks well of the differences between these two communities. Despite personal connections, we’ve already seen this community’s acceptance of death through faith so it feels very in keeping that Luciana would merely grieve momentarily before soldiering on.
The idea of moving on from the past also links in well to Madison’s united hotel community mission. They still have a lot of bad blood concerning Elena but Madison’s pledges of the greater good work well to focus their attentions around a common goal. It even goes as far to mark her as a leader figure. Throughout the episode, we see many drawn to her example, especially the standout set piece of mass walker-herding. This is the biggest spectacle the show has delivered for some time and the aerial camerawork really captures the scale of such a walker pied piper endeavour. It’s a nice throwback to main show’s herding efforts and the sight of mass walker pier lemmings is indeed a satisfying one.
While most of the story in Nick’s community is just setup, it’s good work as it lays the groundwork for a very bloody kick off with the supermarket gang once they discover the fruits of Nick’s, “limited but refined skill set”. It also gives Nick a lot to lose as the responsible party, especially as Luciana doesn’t seem to know about his actions. Hopefully, we’ll see something develop next episode. Seeing Nick starting to accept his surroundings as home sees moving away from his past with his family. As he talks about them with Luciana, he hopes they’re okay but has no desire to find out. `This is Nick embracing his, “person after” only his may be an improvement.
Not everything about the episode works though. Our recap over Madison and Strand’s bar escape is a disappointment. It’s over far too quickly and without any real reward other than hinting to the still missing Ofelia doing a runner with their truck. Once the group was reunited so quickly, it left these early scenes rather feeling needless. Then, there’s a nature of their escape. While blood camouflage/bloody poncho scenes will always bring some nervous tension, it’s becoming far too overused in this half of the season.
It’s not as consistent an episode as the last two weeks but it’s a very good in terms of plot progression with major changes at the hotel and big developments setup with Nick’s community. Despite spending some good time with them last week, Travis and Chris feel like the loose ends by comparison but there’s still 4 episodes remaining and plenty of time to get them back on track.