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"Cindy Hawkins" is the third episode of the seventh season of AMC's Fear the Walking Dead. It is the eighty-eighth episode of the series overall. It premiered on October 31, 2021, the same night as "Quatervois", the fifth episode of the second season of The Walking Dead: World Beyond. It was written by Nick Bernardone & Jacob Pinion and directed by Ron Underwood.
Plot[]
June and Dorie's routine in Teddy's fallout shelter is disrupted when they discover the origins of their home and its sinister connections to Teddy's past.
Synopsis[]
John Dorie Sr. sleeps in an underground bunker. A sign on the wall reads: "Day 25, days til opening 340." John wakes up and eats breakfast with June.
John and June perform their daily routines. John tries to make contact with outsiders via radio. They play Life and share some whiskey. Before bed, June changes the "days til opening" count to 339. They perform the same routine every day up to day 69.
June and John are awoken by a deep rumble. A shelving unit topples over, revealing a hole in the wall. They tear down the wall and discover the room where Teddy tortured and killed his victims.
John sets up lights in the torture chamber, determined to find answers to questions he still has about Teddy's murders. He tells June that he never found the body of Teddy's final victim, Cindy Hawkins. The walls groan.
June applies sealant on their homemade hazmat suits. Sensing John's impatience with her progress, June reminds him that according to a pamphlet that she found on surviving a nuclear attack, it's unsafe to go above ground until the "days til opening" countdown is over.
John goes into the torture chamber to look for boards to shore up the wall. He finds some of Teddy's notes.
John shores up the wall, then asks where the whiskey is. June says the bottles were destroyed when the shelves fell.
Unable to sleep, John goes to the torture chamber and looks around. He finds a necklace bearing the letter "C," for Cindy. The lights blink.
John tries to wake June, but she stays asleep. The walls groan loudly. He climbs toward the exit hatch and hears a woman's voice outside.
John goes above ground in a gas mask and hazmat suit. He finds Teddy's skeleton and Dakota, who is now a burnt, immobile walker. He stabs her in the head, then sees Cindy's ghost. "Help me," Cindy says, grabbing him. June exits the hatch and shoots Cindy. John realizes Cindy was actually a walker. They spot three figures in gas masks and race back underground, locking the hatch.
John tells June he went above ground because he heard Cindy's voice. June wonders if he hit his head.
John asks June if they have extra whiskey. June realizes John is an alcoholic. They hear loud thumping above ground. Over the radio, a man orders them to open the hatch. June turns off the radio, then warns John that he will be going through some severe withdrawal symptoms.
June shores up the ceiling. John hears a voice coming from the torture chamber.
John wanders back to the torture chamber and sees Cindy's ghost. She tells him to find her body. June discovers John in the torture chamber and warns that being there doesn't help him. The ceiling groans. John asks if June checked the radio, but June insists the ceiling will hold.
June boards up the entrance to the torture chamber and tells John to get some sleep.
John wakes up drenched in sweat. Cindy's ghost tells him to find her. June wakes up to find John prying the boards off the entrance to the torture chamber. June sedates him. The wall caves in, burying them in beams and knocking them unconscious.
The strangers' voices come over the radio, saying this is their final warning. John wakes up and sees June lying unconscious. Cindy's ghost convinces him to find her body instead of helping June.
John goes into the chamber and tries to figure out where Teddy hid Cindy's body. June calls out for him. He ignores her. John guesses Cindy was on her way to see her boyfriend when Teddy abducted her. He finds her boyfriend's house on a map and tells June he's going to find Cindy's body. June warns him it's too risky. John confronts her about the actual dangers of radiation exposure. June admits she invented the daily countdown because she's afraid to abandon their life in the bunker. John leaves to find Cindy's body and says he'll come back for June.
John exits the hatch and sees the three figures digging up a second hatch nearby. They finally open the hatch. John shoots at them and kills two of the figures, but the third one descends into the hatch.
June sees the figure enter the bunker.
John races towards the hatch and trips. He sees the ghosts of Teddy's victims then realizes he's just looking at walkers.
The masked figure looks for June in the bunker.
John starts killing the walkers.
The man finds June and aims his gun. John kills him, then frees June from a fallen beam. A piece of wall falls down, revealing Cindy's body behind it. John returns the necklace to Cindy. The ceiling groans. They suit up and race toward the hatch, but the bunker caves in and buries them in dirt.
John wakes up in a bedroom at Strand's tower. June says they were rescued after someone heard his radio messages. Strand checks in on John. John refuses to join Strand after he tried to kill Morgan. Strand says they don't have a choice. John asks who the strangers in the gas masks were. Strand says John can help him figure that out. He pours drinks and toasts to their future. John declines his drink. After Strand leaves, June shows John a large horde of walkers surrounding the tower. She says that escaping isn't even an option.
Morgan searches for June and John at the bunker after hearing John on the radio. Strand radios Morgan and says June and John are safely with him. He says Morgan failed as a leader and that he will now help people his way. Morgan vows to kill Strand if he finds out that Strand is hurting his friends.
Other Cast[]
Uncredited[]
- John Glover as Theodore Maddox (Archive Footage)
- Zoe Colletti as Dakota (Archive Footage)
- Bob Jennings & Garrett Moreno as Stalker
- Unknown as Dakota (Zombified)
Deaths[]
Trivia[]
- Only appearance of Cindy Hawkins. (Corpse/Hallucination)
- Last appearance of Dakota. (Zombified/Flashback)
- The title of the episode, "Cindy Hawkins", refers to one of Teddy's victims.
- This episode marks the fifth time in Fear the Walking Dead that the name of a character is included in the episode's title, the first being "Pablo & Jessica", the second being "Laura", the third being "Skidmark", and the fourth being "Bury Her Next to Jasper's Leg".
- This episode was made available for streaming to subscribers of AMC Premiere on October 24, 2021.
- The fifth episode of Season 2 of The Walking Dead: World Beyond is played directly after this episode.
- Despite being flash burned to a crisp by one of the warheads, Dakota still reanimates and has to be put down, showing that even the extreme heat, radiation and fire from a nuclear weapon at that close of a range isn't enough to keep people from turning into walkers.
- Morgan is revealed to have repaired his axe since the events of "The Beginning". He has added a metal ring near the end of his staff for an unknown reason.
- The intro to this episode uses the song "California Dreamin'" by The Mamas & the Papas.
Episode Highlights[]
- It's revealed that Teddy's Secret Bunker is the location where he had killed all of his victims in the 1970s. However, the police had never been able to find it.
- John Dorie Sr. reveals that Teddy had ultimately confessed to twenty-three murders, but the police only ever found twenty-two bodies. His final victim, Cindy Hawkins, was never found.
- John finally finds Cindy's body buried in the bunker's walls.
- Teddy's MO as a serial killer is revealed to involve kidnapping young women and taking them to his secret bunker where he would kill and embalm them. Teddy would then pose their bodies in the places where they were abducted from, which is how the police had found his other twenty-two victims. He is shown to have kept newspaper articles covering the case and Cindy's necklace in a box in the bunker, possibly as a trophy, although there is no sign of any other such trophies with the clippings.
- John states that Teddy had confessed to twenty-three victims in a way that implies that he suspects that Teddy might've had more that he had never confessed to and that were never found. At least one is known to exist, his own mother, who Teddy revealed to Alicia in "Mother", the police never found out about.