Fear The Walking Dead’s season 8 started after a seven-year time jump from the previous season. So far, we’ve only seen whereabouts of a few characters.
The season 8 premiere mainly focused on Morgan and Madison but in episode 2, we see what June has been up to for the last seven years.
During the Fear The Walking Dead time jump, June has been collecting fingers of PADRE soldiers. Her reason for doing so is to send a message to PADRE that she refuses to let them control her again.
1. Why is June collecting PADRE fingers?
In season 8 episode 2, June explains that she was forced by Shrike to carry out outrageous radiation experiments while he held a gun to her head the whole time. Although she managed to escape Shrike’s clutches by cutting off his trigger finger, the experience still scarred her.
To get back at PADRE for manipulating her, June begins hunting down PADRE soldiers to sever their trigger fingers after knocking them out and maiming them.
June collecting PADRE fingers is a symbolic effort to prevent PADRE from holding her or anyone else at gunpoint and controlling them for personal gain. It’s made clear that June doesn’t intend to kill any of the soldiers; she just wants to send them a message.
June then keeps each finger she collects in a jar at home. This part of her handiwork is however never explained and frankly it’s quite strange that she’d rather keep the severed fingers than throw them away. Perhaps she’s keeping them as “trophies”.
Another odd detail about June’s revenge is that she never actually kills any of the soldiers; she only keeps them unconscious long enough to take one finger.
Given her long history of killing bad guys, I’d be less surprised if she took the opportunity to end the soldiers’ lives while she still had the upper hand.
2. What is June’s fate in episode 2?
June justifies her method of inflicting harm on the PADRE soldiers by saying that it would prevent her from accidentally killing old allies. Although this helped in the case of Dwight and Sherry, she could have still used the opportunity to kill the soldiers after checking their identities.
It would have also been better if June found a different way to prevent the soldiers from being able to fire a gun because we later find out that Shrike gets an artificial finger as a replacement for the one June cut off. This means that it’s only a matter of time before her other victims return the same way.
Both of these mistakes prove to be costly for June because she faces the same fate as before. At the end of season 8 episode 2, Shrike comes back to put June to work on morbid science projects and June herself loses her trigger finger.
June’s plan backfires and she goes back to square one despite all her efforts over seven years to be free of PADRE’s control. Had June spent more time on plotting her revenge, she probably would have had a successful outcome.
Hopefully June is able to free herself again before she’s subjected to more torture. Catch the next episode of Fear The Walking Dead on Sunday, May 28, 2023.
3. About Fear The Walking Dead
Fear the Walking Dead is an American post-apocalyptic horror drama television series created by Robert Kirkman and Dave Erickson for AMC. It is a spin-off to The Walking Dead, which is based on the comic book series of the same name by Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard.
The first three seasons serve as a prequel, focusing on a blended family that experiences the start of the zombie apocalypse. Subsequent seasons run concurrently to the original show, with Morgan Jones (Lennie James) from The Walking Dead crossing over into the series.
The series premiered on August 23, 2015, and has completed its seventh season. The eighth season premiered in May 2023.
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