Season 5, Episode 3: Humbug's Gulch
PLOT: The Walking Dead's Dwight makes his Fear the Walking Dead debut while the characters search for a missing friend and a trio of children who don't want to be found.
REVIEW: If you've watched the last few seasons of AMC's The Walking Dead, you know Dwight, the burn-scarred member of the Saviors community whose wife Sherry was taken by Saviors leader Negan as one of his own wives. Sherry eventually fled the Saviors and Negan, leaving behind a note she wasn't sure Dwight would ever read, as she wasn't sure he would even attempt to find her, his time working for Negan had changed him so much. But Dwight turned against Negan, and after helping defeat his former leader he did go searching for Sherry, and he found a clue to her whereabouts. A note that had one word on it, "Honeymoon", along with the infinity symbol. In a more ideal version of the zombie apocalypse, it would have been easy for Dwight to find Sherry after that. Obviously she was going to hide out in the place where they had their honeymoon, she was going to wait for Dwight there, and when he caught up with her they'd live happily ever after.
But that's not how it went. Now we're at least a year down the line and Dwight has been tracking Sherry across the country note by note. This trail has led him from the Washington D.C. area down into Texas… and right onto the set of Fear the Walking Dead, as actor Austin Amelio reprises the role of Dwight on this episode of The Walking Dead's companion series.
It's an unbelievable coincidence that Dwight would just happen to end up in the exact same place where fellow Walking Dead character Morgan (Lennie James) also happens to be spending his time these days, but I can push aside the nonsensical aspect of all of this to just enjoy the fact that Dwight is back, and now he's on Fear the Walking Dead. That's something I never expected to happen.
Morgan isn't the first Fear cast member Dwight meets. That's John Dorie (Garret Dillahunt) and June (Jenna Elfman), and their paths cross in the dirt streets of a Wild West tourist attraction where a dust storm blows in, tumbleweeds roll by, and composers Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans drop some spaghetti western style whistling into the score. This place, called Humbug's Gulch, may not be a real Wild West town – it's part of a statewide chain, and John used to work at a Humbug's Gulch with the exact same layout in a different location – but it's close enough to bring a smile to the face of anyone who (like me) likes the idea of mixing Wild West and zombie apocalypse visuals.
Since Dwight is standing at the corner of desperation and despair at this point in his search for Sherry, John Dorie and June are the perfect characters for him to bump into, as John was on his own desperate quest to find June last season. They're also a good pair to help him take down the many zombies they have to dispatch as they make their way out of Humbug's Gulch.
While those three are hanging out together, the other characters on the show are also searching. Searching for their friend Althea (Maggie Grace), who seems to have been abducted by someone else with ties to The Walking Dead, and a trio of filthy kids they met in the first episode of this season. As they make their way around the area, they have to cut through a lot of roadblocks formed out of lines of zombies tied together with their own guts. By the end of the episode, we find out who has been making all of these grotesque roadblocks, although we don't understand why just yet.
Whatever's going on with all that, I'm suddenly much more interested in seeing what's going to happen when the characters catch up with all three of those kids again. Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) tries to connect with them the way John and June connect with Dwight, but they don't seem to be as open to connecting with other people as Dwight is.
Humbug's Gulch, which was directed by Fear cast member Colman Domingo, brought us the return of Dwight, a satisfactory amount of Wild West style action, and an intriguing revelation. All that combined made this a damn good episode in my book.
BEST ZOMBIE MOMENT: I recently watched an episode of a show called Hollywood Weapons in which the host tried to replicate a moment from X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE in which Deadpool uses his sword to cut a bullet in half in mid-air, sending the two fragments into two enemies behind him. Of course, the host fired his bullet at a sword that wasn't being held by a person, but his test did prove that a sword could cut a bullet in half and send the fragments into two targets behind it. You just need some Hollywood magic to help pull off the accuracy. Since I only watched that a week or so ago, I was amused to see Fear the Walking Dead pull off its own version of that Hollywood Weapons test with a moment involving Dwight, John, an axe, and some zombies.
GORY GLORY: There wasn't a whole lot out of the ordinary here, just the usual shots of zombie heads getting destroyed. Those zombie guts roadblocks continue to be quite gross, though.
FAVORITE SCENE: The San Antonio Split.
FINAL VERDICT: