‘Fear the Walking Dead’ season 3 finale recap

The Clark clan is really falling to pieces. The two-hour season finale of “Fear the Walking Dead” ended with a literal explosion. The survivors we’ve been following for three seasons scattered like so much flotsam and jetsam.

“Fear” has always been trying to emerge from the shadow of its elder sibling ‘The Walking Dead’ and find its own audience and story.

The finale is really two one-hour episodes back to back: “Things Bad Begun” (written by Jami O’Brien, directed by Andrew Bernstein) and “Sleigh Ride” (written by Dave Erickson and Mark Richard, directed by Andrew Bernstein).

While it almost certainly will never do that in terms of ratings, I think it may finally have done that in terms of story. Resetting the story along the Mexican border for season three, and portraying a collapsing but still nominally operating society, has been a trick that worked.

The past few episodes have been probably the best of all the three seasons. The central complaint of “Fear” was that it got to the zombies too fast and that it didn’t show enough “before” time. What we’re seeing now though is the actual collapse. Institutions have failed, and people are trying desperately to prop things up on their own. Some, like the doomsday prepping Ottos, were ready for this; others, like high-school guidance counselor Madison Clark, were not.

Yet, Madison is still here, and the Ottos are gone, as is their Broke Jaw Ranch. Madison and her children have been moving through a society held together by only the thinnest strands, from the Abigail compound, to Broke Jaw Ranch, to the Gonzalez Dam, and even to a bullring converted into an open bazaar run by a motorcycle gang called the Proctors.

Unlike in the other show, this clan is not sticking together – at one point, even Nick wonders aloud whether his own mother would kill him if pushed.

Alicia’s experiment on self-sufficiency has not lasted long. First, she ran into Diana, played by Edwina Findley from “The Wire,” “Treme,” and “If Loving You Is Wrong” (one loyal reader – my sister – gave me grief for not mentioning Ms. Findley’s entrance last week).

Despite both of them possessing a loner nature, they quickly became fellow travelers. This leads to more complications. While Alicia’s driving them, another truck full of bandits comes out of nowhere and rams them. The girls run off the bandits, but not before one of them whacks Diana’s leg with a bat, breaking a bone.

Alicia brings her to the only place she can think of, the bullring. A doctor there sets the leg, and is impressed by Alicia’s ability to assist him. Would she assist him with another patient? That patient turns out to be Proctor John, the leader of the motorcycle gang, and the penalty for screwing up the surgery is death. It’s too late to leave and Alicia is trapped into joining them. Alicia helps John through the surgery and becomes something of a good-luck charm to him.

Back at the dam, we find out what deal Strand made with John, and it’s a bad one: he agreed to help them infiltrate the dam, in exchange for John letting Madison and Nick go free. That is a steep price to pay and Strand knows that if Lola – the Water Queen – or her enforcer, Daniel Salazar, find out, he is dead.

There are so many confrontations and frictions in the two hours. Troy and Madison have a weird reconciliation that will not last. Daniel suspects Troy was responsible for the herd, and interrogates Nick, with very serious threats of torture to come (luckily for Nick, he’s a good liar). Madison finds out that Troy brought the herd – and kills him. Strand and Daniel, never the closest of friends, finally come to blows – with Strand putting a bullet right through his jaw, and assuming he’s dead.

Colman Domingo as Victor Strand and Rubén Blades as Daniel Salazar in ‘Fear the Walking Dead’

Meanwhile the Proctors are moving on the dam, intent on taking it over and making it the crown jewel of their new kingdom. Lola knows she can’t simply out-muscle them, but she can possibly defend the dam, and can certainly wire it to blow as a last resort. The detonator for the explosives passes through several hands, from Troy to Madison to Strand, and finally to Nick.

The season finale is not a perfect two hours. It’s surprising to say the least that one of the only institutions still standing is a motorcycle gang, with designs on an empire stretching across the U.S.-Mexican border, from the Gulf to the coast. It’s also a bit convenient that Walker and Crazy Dog leave, only to come back at a key moment and save Nick, and then leave again. As tough as Daniel is, how is he able to not be even bothered by a bullet that tore through his jaw? And how is Procter John even able to walk at all, after having major back surgery?

Those are quibbles, really, because the bigger plot points were allowed to play out. Strand double-crosses everybody, and sees it through. Madison actually kills Troy after discovering that he led the herd to the ranch. After wiring the dam with explosives, Nick grabs the detonator, threatens to blow the whole thing up – and then actually does it, even while he’s standing on top of it.

The episode closes on all that water finally flowing freely through a parched countryside, with Madison washing up alone the concrete bank of a riverbed. The little clan we were introduced to in season one has been completely torn asunder. The dam is gone. The Proctors might be, too; we don’t know. Presumably, Nick, Alicia, Strand, and Daniel even with his shot jaw are still alive, but we don’t see them.

The next time we see this group – season four has already been ordered by AMC, and may even include a crossover with “The Walking Dead” – they will be starting from scratch all over again.

Paul Vigna is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and author of “Guts: The Anatomy of The Walking Dead.”