TV Review: Fear the Walking Dead (Season 2, Episode 9)

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Season 2, Episode 9: Los Muertos

PLOT: Nick gets a crash course in how his new safe haven functions while his former companions scavenge a hotel.

REVIEW: Fear the Walking Dead's season 2 midseason premiere, Grotesque, ended on a promising note for the character who has essentially emerged as this series' troubled heroic lead, Frank Dillane as Nick. He found a new place to stay, joining a community that shares his view that the walking dead shouldn't be treated as monsters. As Los Muertos begins, we find that this community takes their kinder view of the dead very far – so far that they even feed those who are near death to the walkers.

This would be too much for most, a sight that would have them plotting to take their leave of this place. But not for Nick. This isn't an episode about him bailing on the place he just found; he's sticking around to learn how all of this works. He may express some disbelief while interacting with community member Luciana (Danay Garcia) and he may break some rules here and there, but Nick has previously proven to be very impressionable, so it's no surprise that he soon appears to be buying into everything these people say by the end of the episode, which includes a fervent sermon by community leader/resident pharmacist Alejandro (Paul Calderon) about delivering themselves to death.

The core belief of this community is that the zombie plague is just a passing thing, a cleansing of the world, a test to endure with the reward of living in a better place on the other side of it. The rhetoric these people spew is going to get old real quick… in fact, they're already starting to grate on my nerves after just one episode.

Los Muertos is primarily focused on Nick working his way into the community, but lest you forget that we were following other characters on this show as well, there is some catching up with other members of the fractured group we started out with – Nick's mother Madison (Kim Dickens), his sister Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), Colman Domingo as Victor Strand, and Mercedes Mason as Ofelia Salazar. As Madison reels from the loss of her son and husband (and her husband's son from a previous marriage, but that kid's not much of a loss) in the great group split, this bunch takes refuge in an abandoned hotel, which actually has great potential as a safe haven in the event of a zombie apocalypse. A hotel would be one of the cooler places you could take over for yourself at the end of the world – not quite up there on the same level of cool as taking over a shopping mall, but it has its own appeal.

Of course, it wouldn't be an episode of Fear the Walking Dead if there weren't passages that feel like they're wasting your time and sapping your energy, and for me those moments in Los Muertos came as Madison and Strand sat in the hotel bar, getting drunk and chatting. Madison goes on a bit about Nick's late father, the circumstances of his death, the fact that Nick inherited a darkness from him… I was over this whole "history of Nick's father" element before it was even introduced in Grotesque flashbacks, and I continue to not care about this stuff in the slightest.

Fear the Walking Dead's characters are also prone to doing stupid things, and here we have Nick and Strand both having dumbass attacks. Nick has a noble goal in mind, wanting to comfort a little girl who lost her father, but shoplifting and pissing off a gang of men armed with guns and machetes is not the brightest way to go about doing that. He may use his knowledge of drugs to talk his way out of the situation, but I have to think he made a big mistake in that moment. And Strand, just because you don't see zombies doesn't mean that zombies aren't around. You don't play piano in the land of the dead. Especially when you're just making noise with the keys for the hell of it.

Then again, Strand's stupidity does stir up a whole lot of walkers, resulting in the promise that we might get some good action in the next episode. Action is always welcome on this show, so Strand, go ahead and make dumb decisions like that every episode or two.

Largely dealing with new characters who aren't getting on my good side and old characters who aren't doing much of interest, Los Muertos didn't work very well for me overall. Here's hoping the things that did occur in this episode will have some awesome pay-off in the next.

BEST ZOMBIE MOMENT: There was an absolutely awesome moment in this episode, when Alicia realizes that the hotel rooms are crawling with zombies, watching them tumble from balconies and pick themselves back up after hitting the ground.

GORY GLORY: Some bloody zombies aside, there wasn't much in the way of gore in Los Muertos. I suppose the best it had to offer was Nick smearing himself in zombie blood once again, something that happens way too often on this show.

FAVORITE SCENE: My favorite part of the episode came in the closing moments, when the hotel group finds themselves surrounded by the walking dead. My enthusiasm may not be high for Fear the Walking Dead at this point, but those last couple minutes make me wish I was already watching next week's episode.

FINAL VERDICT: