Troy begins leading a massive herd to PADRE, but his truck is wrecked by a trap, causing Tracy to seek out Madison's help. After a brief scuffle, the two reach a deal where Madison will help Troy bury his wife Serena and reunite with Tracy and he will lead them to the herd. Troy reveals that Alicia had saved Serena from a walker bite, causing Serena to follow in Alicia's footsteps. Serena was killed in a robbery while answering a distress call, causing the grief-stricken Troy to blame Alicia and Madison. However, the two are attacked by a vengeful Ben Krennick who seeks to reclaim PADRE for himself. Ben reveals that he and Shrike had rescued Madison from the destruction of the Dell Diamond baseball stadium and used her love for her children to manipulate Madison to do their bidding.
Madison draws in walkers who devour Ben while Troy unexpectedly saves her life. A remorseful Troy admits that Serena had encouraged him to continue helping others even after it killed her, and Troy willingly helps Madison's group to stop the herd. Believing that Alicia giving Troy a second chance got her daughter killed, Madison fatally impales Troy with Alicia's prosthetic arm rather than making peace with him. Before dying, Troy implores Madison to take care of Tracy, claiming that she is actually Alicia's daughter who Troy had kidnapped.
Imagine a brief mental exercise and picture the episode without Crane and his henchmen. It would be much easier and smoother to work the central conflict of the chapter without these supposedly dangerous detours to create fake suspense. Even the branch stuck in Troy's shoulder after his truck is catapulted by one of Crane's traps (who must have learned from the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi) is a poorly utilized element, as it seems that the one-eyed villain is completely stuck there to the point where he can't get out to help his daughter. However, when Madison shows up, he jumps out of the truck with the branch and all as if nothing happened, gets into a fight with her, and then still has the strength to dig a grave for his zombified wife and hit Madison in the head with a shovel. I don't usually complain about problems like this in a series, but it was just too ridiculous, too much negligence for a supposedly important moment.
If it weren't for the truly magnetic presence of young Tracy (Antonella Rose proves to be one of the best in the cast), who basically has an answer for everything and doesn't let anything slide, I don't know if I would have endured all the chatter until the moment when it seems like her father is going to finally and magically turn good, only for Madison to drive Alicia's mechanical arm into his stomach, giving her time to say that Tracy is his granddaughter. It was obvious that Madison would do what she did (and it was quite ridiculous that Troy didn't suspect anything), and it was even more obvious that Tracy would be turned into something else at the last second, even though her being Alicia's kidnapped daughter seems strange to me, perhaps a lie from Troy to make Madison take care of the girl. But at least the showrunners had the courage to have Madison kill Troy once and for all. Leaving him alive would have been a complete mockery.
With this, the series' great villain ironically becomes Madison herself, and I hope this is well used in the final episode, even though I'm sure Alicia will reappear alive and well with some explanation for her long absence, leading to a happy ending for the Clark family, even if Madison dies again. As for the other characters, well, I believe they will only be part of the background of the final chapter, as they have all been completely wasted by Chambliss and Goldberg so far, and there is no reason for that to change.
