Synopsis for 4×03: Alicia, Strand, Nick, and Luciana are forced to work alongside their new captors as things start to go wrong for them… really, really wrong.
As they drive away, Nick tells his mother that he doesn’t think they ever could’ve kept Charlie. He asks her how she can stand to be outside the stadium walls and she tells him that she always makes a point to find good things when she’s out there. When they do manage to find a place to scavenge, Ennis the Vulture is already there because it’s revealed that Charlie has one of their radios and can hear them talking. Nick is upset enough to pull a knife on him, upsetting Charlie who is looking on the scene.
Afterward, Nick and Madison are talking about the incident and he admits that outside the walls when you try to do the right thing, you end up worse. When he’s outside, he feels more trapped and like who he’ll be is closing in on him and suffocating him.
In the present, the two groups are bickering before Al reveals that she’s freed herself and holds Nick at knifepoint. She didn’t give them the full directions to the flag and she won’t let them take her SWAT van, but Nick struggles with her and they end up knocking into Luciana — who crashes the van down an embankment.
When Nick comes to, he sees flashes of John, Morgan, and Al taking control of the situation. He passes out again and wakes up to Strand, Luciana, and Alicia zip-tied and kneeling in the grass with the infected threat neutralized. Unfortunately, the SWAT van is stuck in the ditch and Al refuses to leave it behind. Luciana saw trucks down the road that would be able to tow it out, but they have to be released in order to get the information.
Al cuts their bindings, but zip-ties Nick to the van in order to ensure that the rest of the group really is planning to return with her. Morgan volunteers to stay behind with him while the rest of the group heads out. As soon as they’re gone, Morgan cuts Nick loose without worrying about his escape. In return, Nick shares his peanut butter protein bar with Morgan.
They finally make introductions and exchange names before Morgan goes up onto the road to practice with his stick. In the meantime, Nick goes through his backpack and Al’s video camera. He’s watching Morgan’s video when he runs down in an attempt to hide from a familiar car driving by. When Nick sees it, he struggles with Morgan in order to run after it. In the fight, they kick a lock off of something in the van and morgan knocks into the horn that he doesn’t bother to turn off.
Luciana points out a truck with a tow cable on it and John offers to get it running while everyone else looks for gas. Strand asks Al why the stories are so important to her and they have a useless philosophical discussion where she stresses how much the truth matters.
Nick is running down the road, the horn blaring in the background, when he stops in a crop of bluebonnets. Some of the infected get the better of him, but Morgan saves him at the last moment. Morgan asks him about the El Camino and tries to tell Nick that things won’t work out how he wants, but Nick doesn’t want to hear it. He lashes out at Morgan over his choice not to kill and his video.
At the van, John notices an arrow left behind by Morgan pointing them in the right direction, but Al refuses to leave her vehicle behind. John and Luciana leave to get Morgan and Nick while Alicia, Strand, and Al stay behind to pull the SWAT van out of the ditch. They strike a deal that Al takes them to the flag and helps them fight the Vultures if they help her get her van out and answer her questions. Alicia immediately goes down through the group of infected to get the van hitched and towed up.
Morgan is hobbling away from Nick when he comes across Ennis and his vibrant El Camino. He tries to warn Ennis away, but Nick catches up with them. Morgan even tries to hold Nick off, but he doesn’t have what it takes to stop Nick and Nick (and his crazy eyes) knows it. Releasing him, Nick immediately goes after Ennis with the hammer. Morgan makes it as far as the flowers where he saved Nick previously before his guilt makes him turn around.
Inside the silo, Nick and Ennis are struggling. In the chaos, Ennis falls onto a stuffed deer’s antlers and Nick makes a point to shove him down further onto them, killing him. Morgan finds a bloodied Nick at the scene and tells him about his lost wife, son, and friends. He offers Nick The Art of Peace and tries to convince him that it’s not too late for him.
John asks Luciana why Nick is always worried that she won’t come back to him and she tells him that one time she didn’t. He asks her if she left because she didn’t love him, obviously thinking about Laura, and she says she loved him but she still left. Without much fanfare, the van catches up with them and then it catches up to Morgan and Nick, who was reading and thinking about the book Morgan gave him.
As they park, Luciana asks where Nick is and they move to see him. Inside the van, Al realizes they broke the lock off of a storage container that includes a lot of tapes. Luckily, they are all intact still. Nick is putting the book into his pocket when he finds a flower there.
Another flashback occurs in which Madison stops the truck so that she and Nick can marvel at a field of bluebonnets. This is the good in the world that Madison found on this trip and Nick lays back in them.
In the present, there’s a shot and Nick looks down to realize he’s bleeding from the chest. He looks up in time to see Charlie run away before collapsing on the ground. Alicia and Luciana also see her before rushing over to try to save Nick. It’s no use though — Nick is dead (and it was confirmed on Talking Dead that it’s not a fake-out, though we’ll probably see more flashbacks throughout the season with him).
English