Fear The Walking Dead took a long time getting started, but all of that was worth it for the action-packed Season 1 finale, which also brought the first major casualty. Though Griselda Salazar died in a previous episode, it wasn't as game-changing as when Travis killed Liza on Fear The Walking Dead . She had been bitten, and first asked Madison to kill her quickly before the infection got to her brain, but Travis instead took the gun when he found them preparing on the beach. We didn't actually see her death, just heard the shot and saw the aftermath, though it was still a moving moment and fit well with the overall tone of the show.
It's not surprising that Maddie was willing to do the deed before Travis approached, and the scene mirrored the pact that the two ladies made in a previous episode — in which Madison made Liza promise that if she was bitten, Travis would not be "made" to put her down. Madison is definitely hardened, though we don't quite know why yet. I wouldn't be surprised if Nick and Alicia's late father had something to do with it. Ultimately, however, it was Travis who shot his ex-wife, after a desperate plea to cure her with medication, which she had to explain wouldn't work.
This is clearly a turning point for Travis' character. The pacifist father finally got hip to the apocalypse after Andy the National Guard hostage shot Ofelia. Something in him snapped, and he beat the tar out of that guy. In the final scenes of the show, he ran to the ocean to grieve his ex-wife's death and the general situation that they were all in. It will be interesting to see what kind of a person Travis becomes in Season 2.
Honestly, I'm a little bummed that Liza died. I get it. Elizabeth Rodriguez is also on Orange is the New Black, and that films on the other side of the country. Still, I liked the idea that Liza and Madison were going to have to put aside their differences and make post-apocalyptic life work. I suppose that the emotional pre-death scene was the best we could get.
Image: Justina Mintz/AMC
