Major spoilers below for the latest episode of Fear the Walking Dead, so be warned if you haven't yet watched!
From the first episode of Season 6, Fear the Walking Dead was laying the groundwork for the eventual reveal of this season's big villainous group, even though audiences weren't introduced to John Glover's Teddy and his doomsday cult for another ten episodes. Now, with the debut of the episode "Mother," fans have finally been clued into what Teddy's end goal is for his group and for Alycia Debnam-Carey's Alicia, and we now know how that very first "End is the Beginning" reference ties into those all-important keys. At least, we might.
Now let's break down all the reveals from Fear the Walking Dead Episode 614 and what might happen next before Season 6 comes to a potentially explosive close. And know that we're taking all of the information that Teddy laid out with a big ol' grain of salt, considering he's a proven liar.
How Teddy's Big Plan Connects To The Keys
Teddy Maddox is clearly an expert at surviving, whether it be in prison or in more post-apocalyptic settings, but I have to wonder just how smart this dude really is after he seemingly revealed his cult's big plan to Alicia (and to Zoe Colletti's Dakota) despite her continuous efforts to prove how much she wanted to thwart his efforts. Truly genius villains don't ever reveal their plans until they've already been enacted - think Watchmen - but now we've all been made aware of what Teddy's been up to.
The key that Riley stole from Morgan's neck in this season's most depressing episode is part of a set that Teddy aims to use to launch a (presumably nuclear) missile from the same beached submarine in Galveston that showed up in the season premiere. While the cult has been doing a fairly solid job of murdering anyone who wasn't interested in joining their rankings, Teddy clearly has much bigger aims in mind if he wants to use a military missile to wipe people out.
But is Teddy's scope actually big enough? He's smart enough to realize that blowing up a single location with a single missile isn't enough to legitimately destroy what's left of humanity. Teddy has to know that there are other survivors elsewhere in the country and/or world, right? That fairly basic notion is part of what makes me think that the submarine in Galveston isn't really the most vital element in Teddy's plan, and that there might very well be more missiles at play here. Don't forget that the episode's title, "Mother," ties into Teddy's large-scale dishonesty by way of the stolen corpse - which he kissed on the face multiple times - that wasn't actually his mother's body. In the end, I do wonder if his admission to killing his mom and burying her on the family farm was the only honest thing he said in the entire episode.
What Teddy's Big Plan For Alicia Is
While it's 100% easier for me to consider this episode's reveals through the prism that Teddy is a big lying lunatic, I have to stick to the parameters laid out by the showrunners and the writing staff. So when "Mother" came to an end, Alicia was locked up inside a vault within an underground bunker beneath a gigantic hotel that appeared to have somehow gone without being raided and picked over at any point. Alicia is already well-versed in the notion that hotels can be a little too enclosed in a world ravaged by zombies, so she probably already had reservations about being there, and I assume those reservations ballooned once it became clear why Teddy brought her there.
Teddy locked Alicia up so that she would be a lone survivor, so to speak, after the missile attack. Meanwhile, he's setting up all of his other survivors to perish in the blast, under the guise that they're heading to a well-stocked new safe haven, with only a select few seemingly privy to the "truth," such as Nick Stahl's Riley.
While Teddy sees himself as the "end," he considers Alicia to be the beginning, because she has proven herself capable of doing what needs to be done without losing her grip on the concept of hope. Much in the same way viewers have faithfully held onto the idea that Alicia's mother Madison actually survived her self-sacrifice in Season 4, and that former star Kim Dickens will reappear one day. This episode was a lynchpin for more recent hopes, too, considering its title and the fact that Alicia reunited with other stadium survivors such as Sebastian Sozzi's Cole. Could Madison be the one to eventually save Alicia from Teddy's clutches? Probably not, since Morgan and June now have Keith Carradine's John Dorie Sr., who put Teddy in jail in the first place.
Dakota Just Keeps Showing Up To Ruin Stuff
The biggest storytelling wrinkle in "Mother" was Dakota's arrival, as that character has become a big annoying thorn in Fear the Walking Dead's paw. At some point after the whole "murdering John and then finding out Virginia is actually her mother" business, Dakota apparently stuck out on her own with the info Virginia had about Teddy's cult, and attempted to track Alicia down. But later, when Alicia threatened to take Teddy out, Dakota showed her true feelings and sided with the cult leader over Alicia. Or did she?
Similar to how I don't fully believe Teddy's plan is all about that one missile, I don't fully believe anything Dakota is doing or saying. On the one hand, I can believe that Dakota is indeed there to save Alicia, and that she only appeared to turncoat because she was aware the rest of Teddy's cult was nearby and would kill Alicia in the aftermath.
On the other hand, I can also totally buy into the idea that Dakota is just going to side with whatever group has the most attractive offer on the table. To the point where I think she would just as easily jump back on board with trying to save Alicia after learning that Teddy is aiming to blow everything else up. Dakota is absolutely on the opposite end of the self-sacrificing spectrum as Madison Clark, but that might be exactly what Alicia needs in order to survive this impending catastrophe.
Fear the Walking Dead has two episodes left to go in Season 6, airing Sunday nights on AMC at 9:00 p.m. ET. So be sure to keep watching to see if Teddy's plan pans out while waiting for the 2021 Summer TV season to officially kick off.
