Fear the Walking Dead‘s season 3 finale picks up where episode 15 left off, and features a lot of visions of characters both past and present. The first one sees Nick, Luciana and their baby come to visit Madison at Christmas. Except, she realises that they’re not there to visit her. Instead they’ve come to visit Alicia’s grave in the graveyard out back. If this is alluding to a potential Alicia death then I can’t say I’m too happy about it. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if they continue to kill characters at this rate, there won’t be anyone left.

Back in the real world, we see the Proctors arriving to the dam by boat, and Alicia is with them. She meets up with Strand and they decide to quietly work together to fix it. The way Proctor John treats Alicia is, quite frankly, creepy. He doesn’t seem too happy that Alicia already knows Strand and that her mother is at the dam. He wants Alicia to go with him to Houston so he can begin his master plan of creating trade routes between Texas and California.

Strand tells Madison and Nick that he shot Daniel, and describes it as “the worst thing that’s ever happened” to him. Honestly, I think the guy you shot is having a worse day than you, Strand. He tries to smuggle Nick and Madison out of the dam by putting them in uniforms. We see also that Daniel is still alive, and that Lola has dragged him down in the sewer to hide him. I feel bad for the guy, really. He loses his wife, his daughter, and now half of his face. Lola goes to find Efrain, who we haven’t seen for several episodes, but he’s already been killed. She decides to go out in a blaze of glory, killing as many of the Proctors as possible before being killed herself. When Proctor John finds out that Strand lied to him about Lola, he captures everyone.

Proctor John decides he’s going to kill Alicia, Madison, Nick and Strand, and takes them outside. They still have the C4 detonator and Nick manages to get some distance and threaten the Proctors with it. Before we see the result, though, we’re taken into another vision. This time it’s Christmas dinner with the Ottos, Daniel, Strand and Walker. When Madison takes the lid off the turkey, she sees that it’s Jeremiah Otto’s head underneath. The table then gets drenched with blood and Madison goes back to the graveyard outside the house again.

Back in the present, Nick has hold of the detonator, and tries to make a deal where Madison, Alicia and Strand get safe passage along the river. Nick stays behind, choosing to sacrifice himself to save his family. They get to the boat and begin to get away while Nick struggles with whether to detonate or not. Before he can make the decision, somebody snipes one of the Proctors from far away. We see that it’s Walker and Crazy Dog, returning to help. However, they never get to reunite with the rest of the group.

Daniel manages to get himself back up to the action, killing a few people along the way like a badass, and he seems to be managing just fine with a hole in his face. He finds Lola’s body and gives her Ofelia’s rosary beads that once belonged to his wife. Daniel sneaks up on Proctor John and Nick, managing to shoot a few guys of his own. It’s then that Nick chooses to detonate, but it turns out it’s not the best idea in the world. The boat Alicia, Madison and Strand are on gets sucked into the flood of water heading downstream and it pulls them all under. Also, the bridge Daniel and Nick are on collapses as well.

At the end of the episode, Madison resurfaces when she has a vision of Travis pulling her out of Jeremiah Otto’s grave. She’s the only person to come up, meaning the only people confirmed alive are Madison, Walker and Crazy Dog (who chose to leave after seeing the boat go under). The episode ends with her waking up on the shore and the raging flood rushing past her down the river.

While a decent finale filled with suspense, Proctor John seems like a lacklustre villain, considering he only really appeared in the last couple of episodes. However, that could all change if he becomes the Big Bad of Season 4. Regardless, Season 3 remains Fear‘s most solid season to date, despite the fact that there may have been too many main character deaths.

With a cliffhanger this huge, there’s no doubt people will be hanging on waiting to see who lives and dies. It’s probably safe to say that the Clarks are safe, but the rest, who knows? With a new showrunner confirmed for next season, we’ll see just how much things change.

THE REEL SCORE: 8/10