Warning: spoilers ahead for Fear The Walking Dead season 8, episode 2.June has been busy during Fear The Walking Dead‘s season 8 time skip, but the explanation behind why she collects the fingers of PADRE soldiers is only subtly hinted at. After Fear The Walking Dead jumped ahead seven years from Morgan and Madison’s invasion of PADRE, very little was revealed about the fates of other main characters. Aside from Morgan and Madison themselves, only Grace appeared, confirmed to be working as a PADRE collector. Fear The Walking Dead season 8, episode 2, “Blue Jay,” reveals Dwight and Sherry fell into the same trap. June, on the other hand, has been keeping herself occupied by cutting off the fingers of PADRE collectors.
This odd pastime raises two questions. Firstly, if June is so hungry for revenge against PADRE, killing the soldiers would surely be more effective. One of June’s victims dies by drowning anyway, so going to the trouble of knocking them out and maiming them seems strange, especially considering how Jenna Elfman’s Fear The Walking Dead character has a colorful history of killing bad guys. Secondly, even if the logic behind June removing the fingers of PADRE’s collectors is ignored, keeping the removed digits at home in a jar, rather than throwing them away like a normal finger-removing vigilante would, is incredibly unusual.
June Collecting Fingers Symbolizes Her Attitude Toward PADRE
June cutting off the fingers of PADRE soldiers and collecting them in a jar is a prime example of Fear The Walking Dead symbolism. This act of barbarism speaks not only to June’s personal experience working for PADRE during Fear The Walking Dead season 8’s time skip, but also to the manipulative ethos of PADRE as a whole. When describing her time under PADRE’s thumb, June mentions how Shrike held a gun to her head and forced her to carry out grotesque radiation experiments. PADRE keeping its finger on the trigger kept June trapped in a life she despised.
When June escaped offscreen, she severed Shrike’s trigger finger before departing. In strategic terms, this achieved nothing – Shrike simply started using an artificial replacement. The true meaning of removing the fingers was June making a statement that she would no longer be held hostage, and that PADRE could no longer hold a gun to her head. Since breaking free, June has continued amassing the trigger fingers of PADRE members in a symbolic effort to prevent Fear The Walking Dead season 8’s villains controlling her, or anyone else, ever again. Keeping the fingers jarred reminds June of that important message.
June’s Fear The Walking Dead Retribution Backfired Badly
June might argue that her method of tranquilizing and mutilating enemies meant she could avoid accidentally killing old friends. If June was using real bullets rather than darts, she would have shot both Dwight and Sherry in Fear The Walking Dead season 8, episode 2. Alas, this excuse fails. June could have knocked the PADRE collectors out, then killed them after checking their identities. She also could have given the collectors injuries that definitively prevented them firing a gun again. These details confirm June’s handiwork was always about sending a message, not stopping PADRE.
As a result, June’s campaign backfires spectacularly in Fear The Walking Dead season 8. By the end of “Blue Jay,” Shrike has returned. June is once again put to work conducting morbid science projects, Dwight and Sherry are recaptured as enemies of PADRE, their young son is bitten by a zombie, and June loses her own trigger finger. June spent the best part of seven years attacking PADRE, only to find herself in an even worse position. Had she been more concerned with putting a dent in PADRE’s military strength than sending a symbolic message, the events of Fear The Walking Dead season 8, episode 2 may have played out very differently.
Fear The Walking Dead season 8 continues Sunday on AMC.
