Fear the Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 16 review: Madison Clark is back! And she's stealing babies!?

Madison Clark is back! Yes, she has emerged from the stadium fire to lead the show in a brand new direction. We have left the nuclear wasteland behind and emerged into a brand-new landscape. There are still walkers galore, but new threats and challenges have also emerged.

However, the hazmat suits are gone, and so is the sense of rot and decay that had settled over the show. Much like the zombies that we’ve come to love over the span of seven years, the show had begun to erode and stagnate. The sense of staleness can be traced back to when Teddy’s bombs exploded and Texas became a nuclear wasteland. Fear the Walking Dead never recovered from the nuclear assault.

Enter Morgan Jones (Lennie James) and Baby Mo, who come upon a pregnant woman in a new land. Pretty soon, they are captured by a new masked group but are then saved by every viewer’s favorite post-apocalyptic queen, Madison Clark. Only she’s not the heroine we used to once root for. No, she steals babies for the mysterious group known as PADRE.

Of course, Morgan and Madison have never met, but even so, their initial meeting is powerful. James and Dickens are in a league of their own when it comes to acting chops. But when it becomes clear who she is, the episode is elevated to a new level. Moreover, she needs a regular dose of oxygen to survive, something that Jones capitalizes on when he realizes that Baby Mo has been taken by PADRE.

Surprises abound throughout the episode, and the big twist comes when it is revealed that the supposedly pregnant woman was never pregnant. Madison had taken her child, Odessa. One thing leads to another until the truth is finally out. Morgan tells Madison Clark that both of her children are no more.

Without going into spoiler territory, the final minutes of the episode are a great setup for Season 8. We’ve heard murmurs of PADRE through the entirety of Fear the Walking Dead Season 7. And now, we shall unearth the mystery of the community with Madison Clark and Morgan Jones, two of the most powerful and compelling characters in the entire franchise. Should the show choose to continue down this road, the future seems very compelling.

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Did Fear the Walking Dead miss a trick by not having Madison Clark and her daughter Alicia meet?

The answer is a resounding yes. It will certainly be interesting to see how Madison Clark interacts with Luciana (Danay Garcia), Daniel Salazar (Rubén Blades), and Strand (Colman Domingo). If she finds out that it was Charlie (Alexa Nisenson) who killed Nick (Frank Dillane), the consequences could be disastrous. But the money exchange would have been a reunion between Alicia Clark (Alycia Debnam-Carey) and her mother.

Moving out of the radiation zone is the best thing that Fear the Walking Dead has done in a while. Madison is truly a breath of fresh air, and the future is full of promise.