Fear the Walking Dead just aired its most shocking scene ever
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead season 8, episode 2, "Blue Jay."
Well, that was gnarly. Fear the Walking Dead aired one of the franchise's most shocking scenes ever in Sunday's episode, "Blue Jay," as we watched an adult allegedly obsessed with doing everything possible to protect children put a zombie head in a vise and slowly lower it toward a young boy's body until it was close enough to take a chomp out of the kid's shoulder. And it wasn't just any kid — it was Finch (Gavin Warren), son of Dwight (Austin Amelio) and Sherry (Christine Evangelista).
The horrific act came at the hand of PADRE's Shrike (Maya Eshet), who had forced June (Jenna Elfman) to perform scientific experiments on another child in an attempt to halt the infection, and was now forcing her to do so again, or else young Finch would die. And that wasn't all: Shrike also cut off June's trigger finger as payback for June (rechristened Blue Jay) doing the same to her and any other PADRE accomplice she captured.
The Finch scene was so shocking because, as viewers, we are so trained to believe the torture would just be a threat just a threat, and that Shrike would not actually go through with the horrific scheme. But she did. And we watched it all play out on screen.
EW spoke with showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg before the Hollywood writers' strike to get their thoughts on airing the harrowing scene, and the latest developments in the episode as a whole.
Lauren "Lo" Smith/AMC Jenna Elfman, Gavin Warren, Austin Amelio, and Christine Evangelista on 'Fear the Walking Dead'
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let's talk about June, who it seems like is trying to make amends for some pretty gnarly experiments on children. What can you say about what she's been through, and her proclivity for chopping off trigger fingers?
ANDREW CHAMBLISS: June spent a lot of season 7 trying to kind of not rock the boat, trying to control Strand within that tower. Things kind of spiraled out of control for her, and she's carried a lot of guilt for what happened there. And then she found herself at PADRE, where once again her ability to heal people and her skills as a nurse ended up being kind of twisted and used against her. When she was stationed on this train, she realized PADRE was trying to find a way to stop the infection spreading from walker bites, and her desire to help these kids ended up being used against her. Just like we saw with Morgan last week, June became a cog in the machine.
And as we learned in this episode, there was an event that just kind of became the last straw, and that was losing someone who in many ways was an echo and kind of her daughter. And that was the thing that made her say, "Enough is enough." She fled into isolation and has spent the past however many years she's been out there trying to do whatever damage she can do.
That's stopping collectors from bringing in kids. And her poetic way of doing that is removing their trigger fingers, because as we've learned in this episode, Shrike held a gun to her and said, "You have to do this." So in June's mind, it's her way of removing that power from them. She'll never have a gun held to her head. And it ends up kind of backfiring on June as she has her own finger removed at the end of the episode, which will have implications for her. And let's also not forget that she left last season with two guns that were very important to her — John Dorie's six-shooters. So that injury may get in the way of her being able to use those as well.
Lauren "Lo" Smith/AMC Jenna Elfman on 'Fear the Walking Dead'
What role will these experiments play in the season moving forward?
IAN GOLDBERG: They're a very big part of it. We see some of it starting to play out in this episode, and in the following episode it takes on a whole new resonance. But in the plus column for PADRE, in terms of the kids that grow up there, is that "Yes, we take you away from human connection. We separate you from your parents, but we have your best interests at heart and we will keep you safe." And these experiments seem to be a bit at odds with that philosophy.
The fact that Shrike is willing to literally lay a bite on Finch, this innocent kid, for the sake of this experiment — and we all know how walker bites work — that's probably not going to work out very well. But she's willing to take the risk. And as we get further into it, we see that there is some more moral and emotional complexity there in terms of why PADRE wants to do this. Whether they will be effective or not is a question that you have to keep watching for. But it certainly deepens the complexity of what PADRE is up to.
Lauren "Lo" Smith/AMC Jenna Elfman on 'Fear the Walking Dead'
Let's talk more about that bite on Finch. Tell us about your discussions in terms of staging that scene. Because it was super brutal but super effective, and for me, very unexpected to let that horrific scene play out on screen on a kid.
CHAMBLISS: Yeah, we had a lot of conversations starting at the scripting phase, and then with the director, and then we were in post with AMC on how much we were going to show, how little we were going to show, what was effective, what wasn't. We definitely wanted to tell that part of the story to show how brutal PADRE could be, but also how committed to their endgame they are, and the belief in what they are doing is going to actually protect people.
It was important that they followed through on that threat, and it just didn't seem like it was this hollow thing that they were doing. And it also will have some big repercussions for Dwight and Sherry, who were held there and forced to kind watch in their minds what is essentially a death sentence put onto their son.
And then at the same time, it's going to have big repercussions for June, because it's going to up the pressure on her to actually make this treatment work so that Finch's life isn't ended. So it has a lot of implications moving forward. And so much of this season really is about the strength of love and familial bonds and it being a double-edged sword, where some really amazing things can come from it but it's also filled with the possibility of pain.
Lauren "Lo" Smith/AMC Austin Amelio, Christine Evangelista, and Gavin Warren on 'Fear the Walking Dead'
You have Dwight and Sherry being parents here, yet in typical PADRE style the entire family has been torn apart. What can you say about their journey over the past seven years?
GOLDBERG: Dwight and Sherry have had an incredibly fraught difficult journey — starting on The Walking Dead to where we found them in Fear. If you take all their time in the Sanctuary, everything they went through with Negan, what it did to them individually as a couple, and then splitting them apart, their search to finally come back together on Fear, and then bringing them to this hopeful place last season where they really had something to fight for.
When we found out Sherry was pregnant, and right when they were at that level of hope, PADRE came into their world. And as we find them in season 8, they're not having the family that they thought they were going to have, and they've had very little interaction with Finch at all. Dwight is his fighting instructor, but Finch doesn't even know that Dwight is his father initially.
This episode represents a chance for them at having the family they thought they were going to have, and now they've had that ripped away from them too. And it just feels like they are in this terrible cycle of pain that no matter how many steps forward they take, they just keep getting knocked back. And I think that would take a toll on anybody. Dwight and Sherry are both incredibly strong, but they are just continuing to face challenge after challenge after challenge, and it's going to push their relationship to some really difficult places for them — maybe even more desperate than they've ever been before.
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