'Fear the Walking Dead' Season 6 Episode 7 gives us the scariest zombies to ever appear in the franchise
Spoilers for 'Fear the Walking Dead' Season 6 Episode 7 'Damage from the Inside'
After hundreds of episodes across both 'The Walking Dead' and 'Fear the Walking Dead', it can be hard to see walkers as anything more than passing, decayed nuisances now. Unless they're attacking in hordes, they're rarely a credible threat and it takes a lot of innovation for the series to make it feel like something new can be done with them. Season 6 of 'Fear the Walking Dead' has certainly been putting in a lot of effort on that front. We've seen embalmed walkers and the sticky threat of molasses walkers, but with its latest episode, 'Fear the Walking Dead' may have just outdone itself.
When tracking down Dakota (Zoe Colletti), Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) comes across a cabin in the woods, owned by a former taxidermist named Ed (Raphael Sbarge). Ed has been capturing and refitting walkers to make them appear scarier than usual, mostly through the use of antlers attached to their skin in gruesome ways. He eventually became obsessed with his strange creations, one of which was responsible for the death of his wife and daughter.
It's fitting, then, that Ed becomes undone by his own obsessions. Towards the end of the episode, after luring his grotesque zombies in with music, a stray gunshot sends them into a frenzy that has them tearing down the doors of the cabin. Realizing his mistake, Ed volunteers to stay back to hold the horde off so that Alicia and the others can escape and as his creations pour in, we see just what he's done to them.
Antlers over walkers' chest, horns sprouting from their heads, all of them walking more lopsided than usual with bones and horn sticking out of them in decidedly unnatural places. Many of them look like demons that have escaped from Hell itself. It's been a long time since the zombies on 'The Walking Dead' have actually been scary, but this episode's new creations have managed to do just that.
As it turns out, they're not much more of a threat than regular zombies, as Morgan (Leslie Jones) is able to clear them out with relative ease using his axe later in the episode. It's their appearance alone that makes them such a nightmare, but in that regard, Ed absolutely accomplished what he set out to do.
'Fear the Walking Dead' will return in 2021, on AMC.