Sometimes the best thing a show with boring characters can do is kick over all the narrative anthills and shove everyone into physical and psychological spaces that alter everything on a fundamental level.  And for the first time in the short history of Fear the Walking Dead, it feels like the chaos without has finally resulted in chaos within.  All the accumulated trauma and insanity has finally come home to roost.

Celia is the catalyst, but she’s only bringing to the surface what has been waiting in the shadows since the beginning of the season.  I love the symmetry of the season beginning with fire and the mid-season finale ending with it.  One fire set them on their present course with no hope of return, and in many respects, how can any of the current survivors believe it will ever be the same again?  The refuge they had hoped to find is gone, in every sense of the word.

For all that the writers have been trying to sell the notion that Maddie is a take-no-prisoners momma bear, it’s not really until this episode that her actions follow through on the promise in a post-apocalyptic pragmatic fashion.  She decides that the best way to protect Nick and even Strand, as she promised Thomas she would, is to feed Celia to the Infected locked away on the compound.  While we never actually see Celia die, the intent is plain as day and elevates Maddie in a big way. 

Nick is a fascinating character again, because the writers have proven once and for all that they haven’t forgotten that he is, fundamentally, an addictive personality.  It may not be drugs anymore, but he is walking around wearing the viscera of the Infected like it’s the best new high.  And Celia’s concept that the Infected are just people moving beyond death (paraphrasing her mad ravings) adds to the mystique.  Nick feels like he’s conquering death itself every time he walks among the dead, and that’s one of the most interesting spins on the titular metaphor we’ve seen in quite some time.

Chris loses it completely in this episode and brings Travis down with him.  As much as Maddie started out weak and has found her strength (it seems) in this episode, Travis started out stronger and has slowly but surely demonstrated indecision and inability to wrap his head around the demands of this new world.  And so he places himself in exile with his son because it’s the only path he can fathom right now.  It seems obvious that the characters that survive the current crisis will eventually intersect and move forward together again, but changed in fundamental ways.

And then there’s Daniel.  In an episode soaked in the mental illness of several of its characters, it only makes sense that Daniel’s past sins and the rising level of guilt associated with them would overwhelm his sanity.  Daniel was the logical choice to die at this point of the story, especially since he became locked in a philosophical battle with Celia and the two of them thematically had to go down together.  His final moments had some of the best imagery this series has produced to date as the Infected took on the faces of his own personal dead.