In the community, Alejandro refuses to back down and orders the community members to prepare to defend their homes against the bandits. Not wanting to get caught in the fighting, Nick quietly leaves the community, and notices a helicopter landing at a town on the American side of the border. He returns to the community to convince Alejandro to evacuate the community. The next day, when Marco and his bandits arrive, they find the community seemingly abandoned. However, unknown to them, a terminally ill Alejandro breaks open the community's improvised gate, allowing the infected to enter and forcing Marco and his men to flee. Nick and Luciana lead their group out of the colony and towards the border. At the hotel, Oscar suffers a severe head injury due to Travis and is taken to be treated. Since Travis violated the rule of no violence against other survivors, Strand warns Madison that Travis must be exiled in order to maintain the unity of the hotel survivors. Madison is reluctant to have Travis exiled but ultimately agrees to go with him the next morning while Strand refuses to have anything to do with it. Meanwhile, despite everybody's best efforts, Oscar dies from his head injury. Enraged, several of the hotel survivors break into Travis' room and attack him, forcing Alicia to kill one of them to save his life. Travis, Madison, and Alicia are forced to flee the hotel while Strand decides to stay behind after intervening to help them escape. They return to the bandits' supermarket and find the entire building abandoned, and Alicia questions Madison's motives when she starts searching bodies of Francisco and his family for clues to find Nick. They arrive at the community and find that Marco and his men have been killed by the infected. Alicia finds a dying Alejandro, and his last words instruct them to look for Nick at the border. Meanwhile, as Nick and Luciana lead their group across the border, they catch sight of the helicopter again before they are suddenly attacked by another armed group. The survivors flee, but Nick and Luciana are captured.
Reception
"North", together with the previous episode "Wrath", received mostly positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it garnered a 79% rating, with an average score of 7.25/10 based on 14 reviews. The site consensus currently reads, ""Wrath" and "North" effectively conclude a season that has gained resonance as it has progressed, culminating with dangerous but due violence, affecting reflections on human nature, and an intriguing ending teaser." In a joint-episode review along with the season finale, Matt Fowler of IGN gave "Wrath" and "North" an 8.5/10.0 rating together, the highest rating of the season, stating; "Fear the Walking Dead finishes its shaky second season on a satisfying note with some nice, sinister surprises and big, brutal moments. Travis' extended beatdown and murder of Derek and Brandon was excellently done, as were the consequences of those actions. Over on Nick's side of the story, we all knew Alejandro would be exposed as a fraud at some point, but everything was handled well and Nick got to save the day without having to rush in and physically protect people like an action hero."
Ratings
"North" was seen by 3.05 million viewers in the United States on its original air date, below the previous episodes rating of 3.67 million that aired on the same night.
