‘Fear the Walking Dead’ Season 2 Spoilers: A Familiar Face Returns In Episode 5 [RECAP]

After the drama of last week’s encounter with pirates, the crew of the Abigail needed to launch an emergency rescue mission on AMC’s “Fear the Walking Dead.” Episode 5 of Season 2 forced the group to abandon their individual agendas in an effort to simply stay together in “Captive.”

The episode opens with a very tasty-looking steak dinner being made for Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) by her captor, Connor (Mark Kelly). He explains that he’s not really a bad guy and that he has simply built a safe haven and needs to carefully, at times forcefully, screen others for before allowing them to join. Although he’s putting on a nice face, when she asks to see her fellow captive, Travis (Cliff Curtis), or her new ally, Jack (Daniel Zovatto), Connor refuses, opting instead to lock her away.

Meanwhile, back aboard Abigail, Daniel (Rubén Blades) is tending to their new prisoner’s wounds. When they were boarded during last week’s episode, a villainous psychopath named Reed (Jesse McCartney) tried to kill them only to be stabbed through the hip and taken prisoner. The pirate can’t seem to shut up, constantly taunting Daniel and Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie) about how they’re all going to be sorry once Connor finds out what happened. He tells a story about how his father beat him and how his older brother stopped him by cutting his Achilles tendon. He reveals that brother to be Connor. Reed then tries to get a rise out of Daniel by threatening his daughter, Ofelia (Mercedes Mason), but he keeps a cool head.

When Chris asks him how he did it, Daniel reveals that Reed’s harsh words are indicative of fear. He’s simply trying to get in their heads. He reluctantly allows Chris to keep an eye on the prisoner while he goes and reports the good news to Madison. Armed with the knowledge that they’re holding Connor’s brother, they believe they can make an even trade for Alicia and Travis.

After some perfunctory bickering with Strand (Colman Domingo) and his new companion Luis (Arturo del Puerto), who just want to get Abigail to Mexico, the duo acquiesce once Strand realizes he owes his life to Madison after she went back for him on the water.

The episode then cuts to a holding cell on one of Connor’s ships. Travis wakes up to find he’s being guarded by a familiar face: Alex (Michelle Ang), who survived the horrors of “Flight 462” only to have Travis and Strand offer to tow them behind Abigail before cutting their tether and damning them to life on the open water.

Alex reveals that Jake (Brendan Meyer) is no longer with them. After a few days they ran out of water and there was nothing she could do to stop fluid from entering his lungs. Without a weapon to quickly execute him, she was forced to strangle him and dump his body overboard. Apparently, that’s when Connor found her. She led them to the Abigail and said she wanted to see Travis personally, since he was the one who came up with the towing idea.

Fortunately for him, she softens a bit when he explains to her what he had to do with his ex-wife Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez). Rather than killing or torturing him, she leaves. When he asks her what she’ll do next, she gives an ominous yet perfect response.

“Connor says he can use me ... No one uses me.”

Madison makes contact with Connor and the pair agree to a prisoner exchange. However, the moment she gets off the radio, there’s a gunshot aboard the boat. They go downstairs to find that Reed’s plan to get a rise out of someone worked, and Chris used a gun to blow half his cheek off. He claimed that he killed him because he was dying from the hip wound and was going to turn, but no one can confirm it. Luckily, he didn’t get a clean head shot on Reed.

The villain turns and Daniel is smart enough to keep the walker alive. Refusing, almost foolishly, to put any of her kids in danger, Madison goes alone to the exchange to deliver Reed, who has a bag over his head that’s hiding his current condition. Connor is there with Travis, but he sent Jack to find Alicia, who hid from him once she realized her family wasn’t dead.

They make the trade and get pretty lucky. As soon as Connor takes the bag off Reed’s head, the walker bites him and one of the two men he brought with him as backup. That leaves Travis and Madison against one of Connor’s people, who they easily beat to a pulp. Alicia sees what’s going on just as Jack catches her. He asks her if she really wants to go with the people who would cut Alex loose like that, or if she’d rather just escape with him where they can both decide the type of people that they want to be. Obviously the choice between this potentially murderous stranger and her family is easy, but she still seems to have a tough time making it. The episode ends with Jack looking devastated as Alicia, Travis and Madison ride back toward the Abigail and on to Mexico.