Fear the Walking Dead recap: Who are the Settlers?

This week’s Fear the Walking Dead decided to give Logan a little bit of a backstory and, in doing so, revealed the woman behind the villain of season 5B.

Colby Minifie, who was recently seen as a fired Vought PR rep in Amazon’s The Boys, debuts as Virginia, Ginny for short. She and her horseback riders met Logan around the time Sarah and Wendell first jacked Clayton’s truck.

Logan was dropping off more helpful boxes on the side of the road when he heard a frantic woman’s voice come on over the walkie. She locked herself in a station near the Mile 65 stop to get away from walkers, but the dead were about to break in. With Clayton unable to answer the radio, Logan tried to get there in time but arrived only to see the aftermath of the carnage. This is when Ginny and her cohorts in a group called The Settlers showed up.

She explained how they’ve been monitoring Logan’s efforts over the radio and think he has a place in their ranks. “We want the same thing you do, only bigger and better,” she says. “Together, we can get from yesterday to tomorrow.” It’s the kind of mumbo jumbo that sounds a lot like the dogma from that mysterious three rings group, the whole “people may one day call our methods cruel, but there will be people alive to look back on us” thing. Ginny recruited Logan that day. And, in the present, he’s now busting down the gates of the quarry, the secret spot where Luciana, Wendell, and the kids have been working to extract oil from the ground to convert into gasoline.

Logan’s forces intimidate them into relinquishing their guns, but, even though they now have control over the quarry, they don’t know how to extract the gasoline. The calvary comes by way of John and June, laying down long-distance gunfire, and Sarah and Dwight, who commandeered one of Logan’s vehicles to sneak their way into the quarry without being attacked. But even then, Logan knows these people won’t kill him, which makes any threats they give empty.

At the very least, he lets the kids leave to go meet with the convoy, but the others are being threatened to show them how the equipment works. Soon, however, walkers fall into the quarry from the cliff above. By nightfall, the raging fire has drawn dozens more.

Logan’s men are in a panic. The flames have become too hot to quench and more walkers are falling in by the second, only Logan is still focused on taking the gasoline. The kids, meanwhile, didn’t all leave; Annie gets help from Rabbi Kessner, who aides in the walker defense. Logan’s people inevitably leave him, so Sarah, feeling guilty, goes to help them while the others take a gas tanker.

Once Sarah and Logan are inside and away from the flames, a woman’s voice comes on over the radio. Instead of helping the others, Alicia and Victor mirrored the path in Logan’s flashback by going to help a woman who’s hiding in a station from walkers. They couldn’t get to her in time, so Alicia told her to turn on the generator and broadcast her signal for help. Logan recognizes the woman as being in the same station where he once tried to save a civilian. He tips her off to the gun with a single bullet lying on the floor in the back and implies she could use it to kill herself before the dead arrive. Instead, Wes, who heard Alicia over the walkie, goes to help and saves the woman.

When Alicia and Victor finally arrive, the woman says she fled a group of people she had been traveling with. It seems these people became too hostile. One name comes to mind: Ginny.

At the quarry in the morning, the strife between Logan and the others has quelled. Then he and his gang are all shot and killed by Ginny’s forces. She has a lot of forces. Riders on horseback and dozens of footsoldiers with automatic weapons swarm the quarry. Having also been monitoring the group’s activities over the radio, she tries to recruit Luciana and the others. Referring to her group as “the settlers” and “pioneers,” she explains how they’ve been expanding their territory and charged Logan with finding the gasoline supply to grow their venture even further. Ginny proposes they help each other. If they run the quarry and keep generating gas, she will help Dwight find his wife, June find a permanent place for the convoy, Sarah and Wendell find a spot to brew beer, etc. etc.

The problem is, none of them are too keen to join forces after seeing how easily she killed Logan and the others when they were no longer useful. Ginny raises her hand to command her army to kill them, but Luciana steps in. She volunteers to remain at the quarry to extract the gas if the others are allowed to leave with a tanker of gas for themselves. Ginny agrees and the others have no choice but to comply.

It’s unclear what Ginny’s long game is or whether she has any connection to the three rings. But, maybe, Fear the Walking Dead has found its own Negan.

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