Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 Episode 2 Recap: Welcome to the Club

In the second episode of Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 titled “Welcome to the Club,” Virginia forces Alicia and Strand to clear an unusual walker threat, where an encounter with a new ally gives Strand an idea that could be the key to their freedom.

Higher Hopes

At the beginning of the episode, a few of Virginia’s rangers gather a group of prisoners (all of whom have disobeyed Virginia at one point or another) who are forced at gunpoint to clear a sugar-processing plant full of walkers trapped behind a door in the warehouse. The plan quickly goes sideways as the door holding back the dead gets jammed after being partway lifted and everyone in the room is snatched by the legs and dragged under and into the molasses-covered room to be eaten by the undead, leaving a lone survivor, Sanjay.

Elsewhere, Alicia and Strand are on latrine duty outside of one of Virginia’s settlements called Lawton. The pair gets into a confrontation with a ranger named Marcus before a young girl named Dakota yells at him to leave them alone. After Strand tosses a mess-filled bucket at the feet of Marcus, the rangers bring Alicia and Strand into Lawton to speak to Virginia, who is busy getting her hair cut by Daniel. Strand attempts to speak with him, but Daniel doesn’t respond. When Alicia tries to talk to him, Daniel says he doesn’t want any trouble and continues cutting Virginia’s hair, who explains that Daniel’s memories are like a “card catalog” and the “cards are all mixed up” after things apparently got ugly when Daniel was determined to get his cat but things didn’t go his way. Virginia says Daniel is only still alive because of his barber skills.

Virginia tells Alicia and Strand she had higher hopes for them besides cleaning the latrines, but now Strand has to be punished for “assaulting” a ranger. She’s going to send them to a new location for a new job, an “opportunity” they better not waste. When Virginia and Ranger Hill step away, Strand tries to speak once more to Daniel but Daniel says he doesn’t know who they are. Daniel thinks Strand is carrying a heavy burden and gives him his Saint Christopher’s medallion to bear that burden, saying Strand needs it more than he does.

Ruthless Strand

Hill takes Alicia and Strand to the sugar processing plant, tasked with clearing out the warehouse full of walkers that killed the night team. Hill explains there’s something important inside the room Virginia wants. After watching a ranger shoot a runner, Alicia and Strand reunite with Charlie, who was sent to the plant and became a prisoner after attempting to run away twice, and Janis. Strand asks if the other prisoners can be trusted, because instead of clearing out the plant, he wants to kill all of the rangers and escape.

Sanjay explains to the others that the tanks inside of the warehouse are leaking, covering the undead with molasses and causing the walkers to be sticky when they grab people. Alicia tells Strand she’s unsure of his plan to take out the rangers, who are heavily armed. They soon discover that Dakota, who reveals she’s Virginia’s younger sister, has followed them from Lawton, refusing to go back to the settlement and offering to help them. Dakota says that if they kill the rangers, Virginia will hunt them down or she’ll kill the ones they love, like Daniel. Dakota tells them she has seen the tapes Alicia, Strand, and the others made, and that she knows there’s a weapon of some kind inside of the warehouse her sister wants. If they get it, they can use it against Virginia.

Dakota also reveals she knows Strand made a deal with Virginia, and Strand explains to Alicia he gave Virginia the MRAP SWAT vehicle in order to keep him and Alicia together because he knew Virginia would split them up like the others. Alicia wants to go ahead with Dakota’s plan, meaning they’ll have to clear the warehouse to grab the weapon and they need to move fast before Virginia finds out her sister is missing. Alicia, Strand, Charlie, Janis, Sanjay, and few other prisoners begin clearing out the molasses-covered walkers after putting together a fence and walkway along the dock to guide the walkers to them, but then the fence starts to give. Dakota saves Charlie from the walkers before a couple of rangers come in to fetch her, but the rangers end up getting eaten once the horde filters into the room as the makeshift fence collapses.

Strand gets Dakota to safety and in order to save Alicia and the others who are surrounded without guns, he stabs Sanjay in the leg and uses him as a sacrifice to draw the walkers to them. Alicia and Janis are able to grab the rangers’ guns and take out the remaining walkers. Strand lies and says Sanjay made the choice to sacrifice himself for the others and that he couldn’t stop him. Virginia radios the rangers that she’s 10 minutes away and to not let Dakota out of their sight. The group goes inside of the warehouse to find the weapon Dakota says is in there, but they can’t find anything.

An Old Friend

When Virginia and her rangers show up, we learn that there was never a weapon inside of the warehouse; the whole thing was a test to find a true leader, and Virginia sees that now in Strand who had told her everyone was acting on his orders. She gives him a Pioneers’ key pin, essentially deputizing him and giving him control over his newly formed army, saying that when she calls on him and his soldiers for the “big show” they best be ready.

Later that night, Charlie tries to jog Daniel’s memory with the Traveling Wilburys’ song “End of the Line” he taught her, but it doesn’t work. Alicia says goodbye to Janis after learning that Strand is reassigning Janis to laundry duty at Lawton, but is sending Alicia away. Strand, sporting his new pin and authority, reveals he is splitting them up because he needs to forget who he is in order to “do all the things that I need to now, for all of us” and he can’t do that with her around. He then gives Alicia the Saint Christopher’s medallion before walking away as Alicia is loaded up into a truck and taken away from Lawton.

Outside of the gates, Daniel, on his way to Paradise Ridge to give more haircuts, manages to convince his chaperone Ranger Hill to fetch his best scissors he conveniently forgot back in Lawton. When Daniel is alone, he begins whistling “End of the Line” and hears someone whistling back. Morgan appears and takes out a walker that was approaching Daniel, who drops the act and reveals he remembers Morgan, shaking his hand and saying, “I thought it was you she was looking for.”

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