Furious about Strand's abduction of Tracy, Dwight, Sherry and June attempt to return to the girl to her father along with Strand. Wanting to save Tracy from that, Strand escapes with her and brings Tracy to Madison who is continuing her search for Alicia and Tracy agrees to help Madison find Alicia. Wanting to use Tracy to get revenge for Ofelia's death, Daniel accompanies them, throwing Strand out of the truck when he tries to stop them. Strand is rescued by a group of women driving Al's old SWAT van who explain that, after escaping Texas with dozens of survivors who had heard her message, Alicia had traveled around helping survivor groups until her apparent death; having been saved by Alicia, the group has been keeping her alive for other people.
Tracy leads Daniel and Madison into a trapped herd that she claims holds Alicia, but in reality, it's an attempt to get Madison killed by her zombified mother who Tracy claims died because she believed in the same things as Madison and Alicia. Tracy finally tells Madison that Alicia is in a mansion near Fort Worth and Strand talks Madison down from killing Tracy, but she escapes with the knowledge of where PADRE is, convinced that Troy was right about them. Troy attacks Luciana's truck stop, killing most of both groups, but they realize that Troy intends to attack PADRE using an army of the dead like he did with Broke Jaw Ranch. Unwilling to risk anyone else that she cares about, Madison goes after Troy alone in the SWAT van.
The entire episode revolves around Tracy (Antonella Rose), Troy's daughter who disappeared at the end of "Iron Tiger" and was captured by Strand and imprisoned in PADRE in the epilogue of "Sanctuary," to be used as a bargaining chip. Returning to the mysterious island, June, Dwight, Sherry, and Odessa confront Strand in a succession of considerably tired dialogues that result in the girl and her captor being taken as tributes to Troy, under the promise that he will leave PADRE alone. Of course, a series of small and convenient plot twists make everything go wrong, and Strand retrieves the girl - who, thanks to him, now knows the location of the island - to take her to Madison so that the zombified version of Alicia can be located, something that does not happen, as the season's finale seems to want to keep the doubt about her death until the end.
Amidst more twists and turns, Troy faces Luciana's troop off-screen in a battle that ends badly for both sides, and Madison and Daniel lose Tracy - a girl smarter than all the adults there put together - amidst a horde of frozen undead that, as they deduce, will be used as a weapon to attack PADRE (how, I don't know, since there's water in the way...). Strand, in turn, in another twist mixed with deus ex machina, is saved from zombies by the triumphant arrival of Al's armored SWAT truck, now commanded by a group of women who had been saved by Alicia and who now dress like her savior with the aim of perpetuating her ideals.
The presence of this troop that acts under Alicia's name and flag is a really cool idea, but it would have been much better if it had been introduced in the first episode of this season's restart or, better yet, at the beginning of the season as a whole. Perpetuating Alicia through the people who owe their lives to her is, at least conceptually, a much more interesting narrative line than anything presented in the final season so far, and I would like to see more of that, something that seems to be present in Tracy's mother's story, who believed in these ideals. Of course, everything will go down the drain - completely emptying the concept - if Alicia appears alive, which has a good chance of happening in one of those sequences where the mother sacrifices herself for her daughter.
Amidst a huge succession of twists and the complete ignorance of concepts such as distance and passage of time - I know the series has always been like this, but here, this aspect becomes even more evident to the point of being annoying -, I would say that the highlight is Strand. Colman Domingo is a very good actor who only needs a little space to stand out, something he finally gets in "Keeping Her Alive." Of course, the routine of "I'm good, but I'm a villain" or, conversely, "I'm a villain, but I'm good" is nothing new and has already given what it had to give, but he continues to do this layered role very well, which, here, the script by Nazrin Choudhury and Calaya Michelle Stallworth uses and abuses to establish the concept that everyone in this universe, dead or alive, is not completely one thing or another. Not even Ofelia's memory is kept intact throughout the episode when Tracy reminds us that she tried to poison Troy's camp.
In other words, instead of inventing new trends, the showrunners only need to revert to the heart of the series to create good episodes, working slowly with the shades of gray of the morality of the old characters and starting to deal with the closure of arcs, as they rehearse here with Alicia's legacy. Hopefully, the qualitative seesaw will end, and the final two episodes will be well used to bring the original cast to a conclusion as satisfactory as it is closed, without inventing to leave loose ends to be resolved in more future spin-offs.
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