Synopsis for 4×08: Audiences learn what happened to Madison and the stadium in the midseason finale. As with all zombie media, no one’s gone until they’re gone (and you see the body).
In the present, the very same SWAT van is surrounded by the dead. Al has Charlie filming while Morgan and Naomi prepare to go into the infirmary for supplies to save John Dorie. Al uses the machine guns to clear a path for them, but there’s an explosion as soon as they get inside the building. Alicia, Strand, and Luciana have caught up to them — and Alicia shot an RPG at Morgan and Naomi.
Madison is back in her own truck with Al’s camera and the tapes. She’s watching them in hopes of finding Nick or Alicia but is disappointed and Al manages to catch up to her. With the tables turned, Madison has no choice but to share her story with Al.
Alicia, Strand, and Luciana are shooting at Al, though they do mockingly offer her the option to bring her camera in to see how things end with Naomi. Charlie gets Al’s attention because John is getting worse. As they change his gauze, he records a goodbye to Naomi — urging her to stop running from people and to help Morgan do the same. Luciana takes that moment to shoot an RPG at the SWAT van and Alicia moves in.
Al is recording a reluctant Madison, trying to get her to talk about what happened to her kids. She shares her own story about fear holding back a village that was controlled by a warlord. When the fear was taken away, so was the warlord’s power. This gives Madison the push to talk about the promise she made to keep her kids safe and how she failed to do that. She promised her kids a place to live, so that they wouldn’t have to do the kind of thing she did to Al.
In the SWAT van, Alicia has Charlie held hostage and forces Al to tell Naomi and Morgan that the coast is clear. She then tosses the radio near John, who holds it on so that Morgan and Naomi are tipped off to the situation. When Strand realizes Naomi is not coming out of the building, Alicia attacks Al.
Charlie grabs the radio and begs Naomi and Morgan to hurry, but they decide that Naomi has to stay inside and out of reach of their attackers. Alicia knocks into some of Al’s instant noodles and recognizes them. She digs through the tapes until she finds one with ‘Amina’ on it, realizing that Al knew ‘her.’
Madison tells Al the story about a bird flying into the window of their house one summer. Her kids named it Wilhelmina, or Amina for short, and took care of it. They fed it and took care of it, but it wasn’t getting better and Madison feared what that meant for her sensitive son and her stubborn daughter. But one day she found Amina flying around the living room, having lived because her kids gave the bird a chance when no one else would.
Alicia watches the interview tape and Al says that Madison never told her their names. She asks Alicia if the stadium was the place she had been looking for to make her kids safe. Instead of answering, she goes after Naomi and blames her for Madison’s death. Morgan tries to talk her down while Naomi offers her the chance to do whatever she needs to do after she saves John.
Alicia tells her that she doesn’t get to do anything, even after Naomi reminds her that they helped her once. Morgan refuses to move out of the way so that Alicia can shoot Naomi, instead sharing his own past opinions of people with her. He reminds her that he stepped aside for Nick — and look how that turned out — and he won’t do the same thing for Alicia. She breaks down and Morgan hugs her while Naomi goes to help John.
Once she puts the Amina tape away, Al frees Madison and asks about her future plans while gathering some supplies for her. She gives Madison the ramen noodles Alicia recognized, as well as her gun, and lets Madison go on her way. Soon after, Madison is reunited with Strand, Luciana, Nick, and Alicia at a motel. Together, they find the stadium and Madison shares with them her plans of helping people because Al had helped her when she didn’t have to.
In the present, everyone is in the SWAT van together. Naomi is tending to John. When he’s stable, she shares with him that her name is actually June (his favorite month). Strand asks Al why Madison hadn’t told anyone about her, which she thought might have had something to do with their introduction. When Al asks for the rest of Madison’s story, Alicia tells her to pull over.
Sitting around a fire, Al has the video camera ready as Alicia begins recounting the events of the night Madison died. She and Nick were stuck in the parking lot, surrounded by the dead unleashed by Ennis, and Strand, Luciana, and Madison left the stadium in order to go get them. Unfortunately, the rest of the people inside the stadium didn’t have the same faith as Madison that they could defend against the Vultures and their onslaught.
Before Madison could get her family back inside, the gates opened and the rest of the people began to flee. Madison tried to stop them, but Mel had stolen their car — Charlie interrupts to explain that he found her in the parking lot and saved her from the chaos. No one else seemed to be able to escape and Naomi claims she tried to talk them out of fleeing. She didn’t want to leave, but by the time she got back to everyone, it was too late. She ran.
Alicia accuses Naomi of joining up with the Vultures when they thought she was dead, but Naomi explains that she thought they were all dead too. She didn’t think there was anywhere else for her to go. There wasn’t another escape from the stadium until Madison had the idea to clear a path for them. Lighting a flare, she drew the dead to her and brought them into the stadium. Strand burned his hand badly as he held Alicia back, saving her life, from going after Madison.
She did try to backtrack through the tunnels in order to get out of the gates, but they were still completely overrun. Instead, she locked herself in and radioed the vehicle to tell Alicia that she thought they needed the stadium to stay who they were, but they know who they are. The stadium was always about the people and no one’s gone until they’re gone. She threw the flare and lit the whole place on fire… sacrificing herself.
Emotional, they all sit and share a meal in silence after that story.
English