Sumith Prasad
The seventh season of AMC’s post-apocalyptic series ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ prominently revolves around Alicia Clark’s efforts to find a refuge for the remnants of the apocalypse with the help of her friends and allies. She joins hands with Morgan Jones’ forces and eventually convinces Victor Strand to leave the Tower to seek a safe place with her friends. Although Alicia manages to lead her group to a more hopeful future, she stays away from them in the penultimate episode of the seventh season. Since the eighth installment of the series hasn’t yet revealed what really happened to her, let us share our take on the same! SPOILERS AHEAD.
Alicia’s Battle with the Walker Bite
Alicia Clark’s life turns around when she gets bitten by a walker while hiding inside a bunker. Although her bitten hand gets amputated in no time, Alicia fears whether she will turn into a walker due to the bite. However, she manages to stay alive and fight for her friends and allies, especially to find a safe place for them to survive the radiation exposure. Alicia lets her friends and allies know that she has been searching for a safe place referred to as “PADRE.” In the seventh season of the series, she even convinces her “adversary” Victor Strand to leave his Tower and join her group in pursuit of PADRE.
Ever since getting her bitten hand amputated, Alicia suffers from an inexplicable illness that affects her severely. She leads the pursuit to find PADRE with the same illness as well. The fifteenth episode of the seventh season follows Alicia’s efforts to save Victor from his Tower. She leads Victor to her friends and allies, who set out to leave for PADRE. Alicia believes that she is too sick to join her group since she doesn’t want to slow them down or/and become a burden for them. She stays back alone on the shore, severely ill, while her group leaves her. In no time, she faints down, seemingly succumbing to her illness.
Still, Alicia soon wakes up with no trace of her illness. She appears to be radiant and energetic. Considering her angelic appearance, one cannot be blamed for theorizing that Alicia dies and her regaining consciousness happens in the afterlife. Co-showrunner Andrew Chambliss, however, has a different interpretation of the same. “Alicia collapses, seemingly succumbing to the fever. She wakes up seeing this bird flying over her. And I think it’s open to interpretation whether or not that bird is really there, whether or not she really freed a bird from the Tower, or whether that was all part of her subconscious. And, if it was, maybe this is just her subconscious trying to guide her once again,” the co-showrunner told in ‘Fear the Walking Dead: Episode Insider.’
If Alicia regaining consciousness happens in her subconscious, does she stay alive? Chambliss thinks so. “And we really wanted to build this kind of reawakening of Alicia, where she has been through this incredible journey and is now standing up and is going to be walking into a kind of a new world with a newfound strength… We know that she’s been saving that bullet out of fear of turning. Her using that on a walker really is a sign that Alicia believes she has beaten this thing, that Alicia thinks she’s going to live… Then we see her walk off as a triumphant hero,” he added.
Considering Chambliss’ words, it is safe to assume that Alicia hasn’t died of her illness. However, the sixth episode of the eighth season raises concerns over Alicia’s fate as an unrevealed individual is seen with her prosthetic arm. Since the same person possesses the hammer Madison Clark uses to smash Troy Otto, the individual can be the latter. If that’s the case, Troy must have hunted down Alicia and killed her to possess her arm. He must have taken the arm to show the same to Madison to cause the latter immense pain since she tried to kill him in the third season finale.
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