"Fear the Walking Dead" Sanctuary (TV Episode 2023) Poster

(TV Series)

(2023)

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5/10
S8.E9 - Boring & Filler [5/10]
panagiotis19935 November 2023
Warning: Spoilers
(S8. E9) My Live Reaction / Review for Fear The Walking Dead Season 8 Episode 9 ''Sanctuary'': Episode 8 was mediocre and I gave it a rating of 6/10. Let's see if this one is better or worse. Nice to see Dwight. So Dwight decides to risk his life to save a total stranger he knows for 5 minutes? That's so dumb. Dwight has become sad and lonely, it seems like he doesn't wanna help the rest of the group to fight against Troy. 20 minutes in and I see no Madison, no Victor or Troy, that's not good. I don't care about these lame bad guys that want revenge for their friend that Dwight killed. Dove is so annoying. 40 minutes in, this episode is so so boring. Wow no Victor or Madison or Troy in this episode, ok we saw Victor for 2 minutes, you know what I mean. Overall this episode was filler and extremely boring. My rating is 5/10.
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5/10
not moved whatsoever
samrichards-4343115 November 2023
Warning: Spoilers
There is no room for filler in a 12 episode final season!! (half the season so far has felt like filler) The dynamic between Dwight and sherry is so frustrating! Just more flip flopping and terrible writing. I liked seeing the sanctuary, but I'm tired of the rehashing of traumas because of what happened to them years and years ago.

Ummmm strand kidnapping troy's kid is just weird and gross. I kind of hope everyone dies in this show except for Daniel, that's how little i care about these characters right now. Every character has an annoying thing about them, all the writers should've been fired before the start of this season.
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6/10
Oh Snaps, You Got Me AMC ...Plus
WordsworthStone6 November 2023
Warning: Spoilers
You nearly got me AMC, almost made me forget, the fan service last week, re-aliving dead characters, not zomb re-animation but like SAG-AFTRA card speaking role, alive. Sort of. RIP Charlie. I spent all this time lamenting about the absurd direction this final season has gone, distracted.

This episode reminds me of what really bothers me about the whole TWD universe recently. I'm not sure if you've noticed and I can't let it go, you can't unsee it. Every show in-universe has embraced the theme of....wait for it....bad parenting. Because in the zombie apocalypse, if the zombs don't get you, neglect will. In FTWD case, it'd be, bad parenting after the nuclear apocalypse during the zombie apocalypse.

You don't believe? **MILD SPOILERS**?

TWD: Alpha, Whisperers, Lydia and the toxicity of co-dependency. Michonne abandons Judith and RJ with Daryl to look for Rick who, if alive, did not return to his children.

TWD:Daryl Dixon: Abandons the Alexandria kids in search the cause of the zombie outbreak, meets a child savior character in France, tries to abandon them too.

TWD:World Beyond: This whole show, it's a coming of age story of children of bad parents who themselves were sheltered from the zombie apocalypse.

TWD:Dead City: Story of generational trauma and forgiving the murderer of the father of the family. Also the redemption arc of the murderer and his own personal struggle with being a father figure after he ended families including his own.

FTWD: Virginia and Dakota storyline (so much there), then Teddy's doomsday cult nuclear apocalypse and finding the mythical paradise where the children can shelter. Starting the new season with a time jump and a complete reversal of any parental values we previously followed--ALL the parents abandoned their children to PADRE. Brings back motherly Madison, like the others, turned into a terrible person and KIDNAPS CHILDREN FOR PADRE. And the eventual FALLOUT, not just nuclear kind, there's also the ending of the nuclear family.
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7/10
Half-decent episode that could have been better
matp-4760010 November 2023
LOVED the first 5 or so minutes of the episode. Dwight is such a good character but Sherry drags him down. Unfortunately Dwight isnt alone for long but while he is he makes a solo trip back into the Sanctuary to retrieve some stolen supplies. This is easily the best part of the episode.

It quickly goes downhill when Sherry, June and Odessa arrive all the way in Virginia. I can put up with Sherry, but Odessa was pretty unbearable this week, and she and her storyline dragged this episode down. If it had been entirely focused on Dwight, with just a little bit of Sherry and June, it could have been much better.

Overall though, I had a lot of fun. But mostly because of the callbacks to the Sanctuary, Negan and the Saviors, and also because Dwight might be my favourite character left on Fear.

Madison, Daniel, Strand and Troy just aren't doing it for me lately. They don't even feel like their old selves anymore. I'm not super excited for the next episode because tbh, I just want more Dwight.

Also - Its ridiculous that Dwight went all the way back to his old home in Virginia and the Sancutary but didn't stop in at Alexandria. COME ON.
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3/10
The Sh*tuary.
simianfriday10 November 2023
Warning: Spoilers
Wow what a terrible episode. The best thing about this episode is that once in a while you can catch the actors cracking a smile and trying not to laugh at the absolute absurdity of everything going on. I kind of hope to get to see bloopers for this episode some day as I imagine they kept laughing while trying to deliver their ridiculous lines. The entire episode is nonsense from top to bottom...

First Dwight goes "home" - his pre-zombie apocalypse home, that is, which is *WAY* back in Virginia - more than 340 miles from Ossabaw Island (the location of PADRE). I can accept him making that lengthy trip, even though it seems a bit unlikely, but he's eventually joined by Sherry, June, and Dove who say they've come to get him because PADRE is about to be attacked by Troy and he's the only person all the kids will listen to so he needs to come back in order to be a general for their child army in this war. I'd love to know how they managed to find fuel for the truck they're driving as I know they'd have to fill that thing up a minimum of 2 or 3 times to make that round trip journey, but hey, this is Fear and they've been playing it fast and loose with distances between these locations for years now so I guess in the world of the Walking Dead the United States is only about 1/8th the size it is in real life. Gotta love it.

Anyway, before Sherry and the gang arrive, he encounters a guy that needs insulin - we're about 15 years into the apocalypse and we're supposed to believe that insulin dependent diabetics would still be alive? Let alone that insulin would still be around? I know they tried to explain this by having the guy say that someone in his group knew how to make it but... come on now. Insulin is not an easy thing to just make yourself - there's a reason people lose their minds over the cost of insulin today - that's not something that'd be an issue if just anyone could make it at home. But not only are we supposed to believe this insulin dependent diabetic is still alive and still has access to insulin, but that he just happened to know a guy that was able to manufacture it 15 years into a zombie apocalypse? Come on now. Anyway, that guy dies because of course he does and then Dwight begs Daryl, who isn't even around, to just kill him already.

The rest of the episode is a lot of saccharine, over-dramatic nonsense between Dwight, Sherry, June, and Dove - while a group of post-apocalyptic bandits try to murder them.

The sanctuary collapses and the heroes of the story ride it out by hiding inside a furnace. Miraculously, the entire horde of walkers is killed by the collapsing building but the furnace they hid inside of isn't even dented by any falling debris, nor is any debris blocking their one and only exit. It's clear they were protected by the spirit of their dead son or something though because at the end of it all they see a finch perched above them and that was his made up code name, remember?

Also, Dwight whittled a new finger for June out of a chess piece because Jenna Elfman is getting tired of having to tape her finger to her palm for every episode.

Finally, at the end, we see Che Guevara - sorry... I mean Victor Strand, setting up a bedroom for Troy's daughter that he had his German militia kidnap. He's no doubt going to do something cartoonishly evil in the next few episodes.

I will say, as much as I think this show is terrible, I kind of do appreciate that they've made these main core characters very unlikeable and borderline evil. They are not paragons of morality by any means - they're almost all very flawed individuals who do really awful things and are arguably even the bad guys much of the time. There's something interesting about that as a concept but the writers never really take it anywhere satisfying, which is a real shame.

Anyway, we're almost at the end now. Just a few episodes left...
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again, a pretty solid episode
crispycriscuolo6 November 2023
I'm only really here for the resolution to the original fear characters' stories but this episode was a pleasant surprise. It felt the closest to a good original walking dead episode we're probably ever going to get at this point (coming from someone who hated when FTWD tried to go all walking dead in season 4), and it wrapped up the whole sanctuary business nicely. Really well directed and performed as well. Glad this little arc only had one episode dedicated to it and we can get back to the main conflict asap. The little tease of strand returning to his villainous(?) ways has me pretty intrigued.
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6/10
This episode breaks the rhythm of the season, a regression from where Sherry and Dwight had stopped in the 6th episode, but now they seem to be together again
fernandoschiavi4 May 2024
After the surprising eighth episode, it seems that Fear the Walking Dead regretted delivering something minimally good and decided to return to the standard mediocrity of this current season. Despite its questionable quality, this episode managed to handle a specific issue well (at least at the beginning); the accumulated traumas of Dwight (Austin Amelio) and the weight of his past. The first ten minutes of this episode are very good and easily the best thing about it, as it effectively addresses all the burden on the character. How traumatizing is the loss of a child? How difficult is it to live with terrible decisions from the past that cost lives? The episode starts by exploring these questions, but then it gives them up for a silly "nostalgia."

At first, we see Dwight finally confronting his past, and through his pain, we understand the weight of all this accumulation on him. Returning to his old house seemed to be seeking comfort and stability, but he realizes that the more he delves into the past, the greater the wounds that will be opened. Austin Amelio's performance shines in these early minutes, portraying all the physical and mental strain, the vulnerabilities, and the depression the character is experiencing are conveyed through his physicality, voice intonation, and expressive eyes, perhaps being the actor's peak throughout his character's history.

However, all of this is thrown away, all this buildup is discarded because after Jay's (Jack Mikesell) death, we have the return of June (Jenna Elfman), Sherry (Christine Evangelista), and Dove (Jayla Walton), and these three characters take away all the dramatic weight that was being well-built in Dwight. It's as if the episode didn't want to give him protagonism and desperately needed to fit more characters into the plot. This episode needed to be a unique journey for Dwight and Sherry, to conclude these open arcs of the couple and give them a worthy conclusion, especially after so many traumas and sufferings. June and Dove's presence not only takes up more screen time than necessary but also leads to a dragged-out and forced plot for the episode. This bloating in the story sidelines the character study that could have been very successful.

Having an episode focused on a character from the main series, where he revisits a place from his past to confront his demons and end a cycle in his life, is the perfect description for the 4th and this 9th episode. A replica of what was already done in the same season, but worse and not working as well as the first time. If in "King County," the narrative paused the main plot to tie up loose ends for Morgan (Lennie James), there was a justification and a final result that justified this delay in the story, as the final feeling was that Morgan's journey with his family had truly concluded. Unlike here, which appears to be just another adventure and a call to nostalgia to please the less demanding fans. It's undeniable that seeing the Sanctuary destroyed and in pieces after so long is cool, but now the question remains, is this nostalgic factor enough to sustain an entire episode? Especially one of the final episodes of a series that lasted 8 years.

The maternal plotline between June and Dove doesn't work and only serves to drag the episode further. Moreover, Dove, in this episode, only serves to occupy screen time and irritate viewers with every sentence she utters. The actress tries to make the character's fears and doubts plausible, but the writing is so weak that it makes her seem clueless in the end. If the character is so afraid of death and the PADRE base is where she feels most comfortable, why on earth did she decide to go on a mission alone to face an unknown group in an unknown place? It's decisions like these that make the episode disagreeable as a whole, how annoying these rushed decisions and narrative changes are, destroying the potential that the episode presented in its introduction. Additionally, once again, we have dumb antagonists who die easily, even after more than a decade surviving in this world. The group now residing in the Sanctuary seems to be derived from the PADRE soldiers in the first part of the season, they are so dumb, beyond caricature, with the most trivial motivations possible. The conclusion these "antagonists" receive is laughable and makes no sense. They literally infiltrate the middle of a zombie horde to die, in one of the most embarrassing scenes of the season.

This episode breaks the rhythm of the final episodes by introducing a core story that leads from point "B" to point "A," in other words, a regression from where Sherry and Dwight had stopped in the 6th episode, but now they seem to be together again. Austin Amelio delivers the best performance within the character, but his effort deserved much more than this accumulation of mediocrities that was this chapter. This episode is a true filler and ultimately serves no purpose within this end of the season and series. When watched, the impressions don't seem so bad, but when analyzed with a little care and considering the point at which the season is, this episode becomes a true house of cards. In the end, the only scene that makes the story "move" is the entire final segment involving Strand (Colman Domingo) and Tracy Otto (Antonella Rose). Victor seems to have found and captured Troy's daughter (Daniel Sharman), something the episode doesn't show or bother to explain, but instead of exploring this, it focuses on the relationship that no one cares about between June and Dove. This ending will be the only usefulness of this episode in the midst of this final batch.
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4/10
It's just so bad!
serenafassbender17 January 2024
Warning: Spoilers
Writing my first review because I cannot take how bad this show has gotten! I find myself laughing often out of pure disbelief of how ridiculous everything is. I can't take it seriously. As if an insulin dependent diabetic would still be around this far into the apocolypse and just happens to wander to where Dwight is, in his old home and the fact it ends up connecting back to the sanctuary. All of it is just a long shot with too many coincidences. The long distance travels everyone keeps making back and forth as if it's nothing, I guess we are just supposed to ignore it at this point. Dove is so annoying in this episode, why do we care if she lives? She went off on her own? Why exactly? Gets shot and endangers the rest of them. Let her die, we don't care! June whining she can't do anything because she lost one finger. Okay it would obviously be an adjustment and traumatic but the rest of her hand and fingers will get used to it, if she uses them instead of ordering everyone else around! The amount of times June repeats something along the lines of "we need to do it now" is comical, like a broken record. Of course only Strand would be deranged enough to kidnap a child and hold her hostage.
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8/10
Brilliant
mjhuijbregts6 November 2023
Warning: Spoilers
I'm extremely critical of Fear on a weekly basis. And the only way to please me as a viewer would be an episode with one of the few likeable and believeble characters still on the show, without any context of the show and the current plot. And this was almost that(stand allone episode).

The first 10/15 minutes of this episode I loved, and looked like it was going to be a Dwight stand allone episode with a flavour of the past. If this would of been the episode we would of gotten I might of even ejoyed the episode even more. Dwight and Sherry are the only relevant characters left in Fear the walking dead(in my opinion), so my opinion on this episode might therefore be biased.

Believebility in this show is a major issue to me. There ere some minor question episodes aswell but nothing compared to prior episodes.

I'm extremely suripised to find quite average ratings for this episode so far. I would think such an episode would be relatively popular among the fanbase.
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7/10
Dwight's Madness
ZegMaarJus8 January 2024
Warning: Spoilers
This Episode begins with Dwight, he ended up on his own after he split up with Sherry. Dwight pushed Phil into the oven, Phil burns. Jay turned into a walker. Dwight killed Jay. Dwight got reunited with Sherry, June and Dove. Dove got shot, she needs medical help. Sherry injects Dove with anesthesia. Sherry got stuck underneath a fence, walkers are trying to bite her. Dwight rescued Sherry. Dove fainted, she tried to pull out the bullet herself. Marty got bit by Phil, who became a walker. Solid Episode of Fear the Walking Dead Season 8, just another Solid Episode. The level of this last Season is not good enough so far!
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4/10
Dwight & Sherry steal!...
fountasalexander6 November 2023
... steal our entertainment!

These characters just aren't interesting, atleast, when they're together.

Dwight was a good character until Sherry came into Fear, Sherry has to be the most annoying character in FearTWD, shes uninteresting and makes Dwight uninteresting.

I think Dwight's personality change is pretty realistic, he's been through a lot, so I thoroughly enjoyed most of his scenes this episode, and generally enjoyed his character.

However, this episode was pretty boring, not much happened really, it's more of an update on these characters that have been left out so far in 8B, jammed into a 40 minute mess.
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8/10
Really good
daytonnorton6 November 2023
Warning: Spoilers
I really liked it and all of the negan and Daryl flashbacks were cool but I just wanted Dove to go so bad. But I am really exited for the next few episodes of this show because I think it's going to end very well and I hope that Alicia is still alive. I really am liking Troy as the villain also. I am so exited to see if he dies or not. Very exited for these next few episodes. I'm glad this isn't Dwight's final episode and I really hope he goes to dead city and he and negan have to reunite. It would be so cool to see them Together. This next few episodes should be good. This season is so much better that season 7.
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5/10
"Sanctuary" takes us back to familiar grounds and much needed character development for Dwight, Austin Amelio was great - a decent episode
Holt3449 November 2023
Warning: Spoilers
"Sanctuary" is the ninth episode of the final season and is directed by Phil McLaughlin, written by Justin Boyd & David Johnson. The direction was actually quite good, no real issues with it except for the direction to the antagonist group which could have been slightly better and same with the insulin guy and Dove. The cinematography was quite good, with some good shots and camera angles. The sound editing and musical score was fantastic. The makeup department did some fine work with the zombies.

Dwight and Sherry confront the demons of their past to secure a better future for themselves.

This episode is all about Dwight and Sherry, with the latter of them going together with June and Dove to The Sanctuary and their old Dwight and her old house. The writing for Dwight in this episode was great, showing his inner darkness and if it wasn't for Austin Amelio's brilliant performance. The showrunners have failed June completely with this season, we learn she had John Dorie's child but the baby died of pneumonia. All her character development went out the window in this second half, so much potential of what happened in the first half of the season, but now she's nothing but a side character with no real meaning when she used to be one of the leads. Back to Sherry and Dwight, the former of them is someone who has been hard to like but fate wants these characters to be happy and this episode shows a better side of Sherry, though the argument she pulls to try to get Dwight to come back is manipulative and how she drags into their son and making his death mean something, is something that the writers have pulled with different characters, notably Nick and Alicia in the previous two episodes. I'm tired of this cliché in their writing. The walkie talkies are used countless of times, even at times when it gets these survivors who have survived for a decade or more in deep trouble like all their intelligence goes out the window whenever they use a walkie talkie. About The Sanctuary, it's certainly possible another group would take up residence in that old settlement, that's realistic. What isn't realistic is how one dimensional and comic-like they are, they didn't really think that much with that group which is unfortunate. It's one episode, yes, but groups/people can be good too. I liked the uses of flashbacks for Dwight, how these memories are still haunting him, makes his return much better as he has indeed become a hero, a man Padre needs for the upcoming war. How Dwight chooses to help this random person who he has never met, then goes to these lengths to get insulin, walking into his own nightmare. That takes a good soul and a good heart, something this morally grey character has always had. I liked the writing for Dwight a lot in this episode, I just wish the episode didn't have a subplot of June and Dove, June should have gone with Sherry alone. This is all about Dwight and Sherry, like the midseason finale was about Morgan. I liked the ending with Strand kidnapping Troy's daughter, the possibilities of storylines with that! We'll just have to see.

"The Sanctuary" was a decent episode, with the writing going back and forth between good and bad. There's some good drama, good direction and visual storytelling but also great acting from most of the actors. Christine Evangelista and Jenna Elfman pulled some good performances too.
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10/10
Really overhated episode?
rxqpt4 March 2024
Warning: Spoilers
When I went on IMDB I expected this episodes rating to be one of if not the best of the show.

The writing was for once pretty solid, if maybe a tiny bit cheesy at times. People criticize the fact that Sherry and the gang found Dwight so far away, which, he was at his own old home, they knew he was there!

The biggest logic fallacy is just how they got there, they must've had a lot of fuel. Otherwise this episode, for once, manages to stay pretty consistent. The wrap up for Sherry and Dwight's character arc was nice. The return to the sanctuary was AWESOME. Daryl and Negan flashbacks were included as well, which is great.

Visually this episode was also great. It reminded me a lot of classic The Walking Dead, it had a season 6 vibe to it.

IMO one of the best episodes yet, on par with that of early seasons of this show and topping quite a few episodes of the original show. No idea why it got this much hate and is rated worse than the last episodes. I was expecting at least a 8/10, nothing near a 5.6.
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