Flight 462
Directed by Michael McDonough
Deirdre: We've been trying... it's not just Phoenix. Flights are going out everywhere. There's nowhere to land.
Onboard a commercial airliner, a young man named Jake Powell is waiting in his seat before takeoff.
After staring at a young Asian-American woman seated a row ahead of him, Jake gets a call from his mother, who informs him that she won't be able to make the flight and will have his father meet him at an airport in Phoenix, Arizona. As Jake talks to her, he begins to hear loud noises and screaming in the background. At the same time, a passenger named Marcus begins to question one of the flight attendants, Deirdre, about news he's received that all flights have been grounded.
As Jake yells at his mother to tell him what's going on, the phone line goes dead and the young woman, Alex, jolts him back to reality by slamming his side window shut before returning to her seat. Jake tries to send his mother a text message to no avail, while Marcus vomits into an airline sickness bag and Alex stares at Jake.
Jake continues to try texting his mother as the plane takes off, but discovers that there's no more cell service. When the plane reaches cruising altitude, Marcus suffers from another round of nausea and runs to the bathroom. Alex gets up and questions Marcus' wife, Suzanne, about how long he's been suffering from nausea, but she shuts her down by telling her to mind her own business.
Alex gets back down in her seat, but Jake asks her if she thinks that Marcus has also been affected by the "strange disease" that is going around the population. Alex doesn't answer and turns back around in her seat.
Some time later, the plane begins to descend towards Arizona, and Marcus still hasn't come out of the bathroom. Suzanne and Deirdre are both waiting to get in, and try to yell at him to come out, but don't receive an answer. As the plane descends towards Phoenix, Jake stares out and sees the power grid shutting off across the city. At the same time, Alex stares at the locked bathroom and begins to get out of her seat. She heads towards the back of the plane while telling Deirdre not to open the door.
However, Deirdre forces it open, and an unconscious Marcus falls out. She and Suzanne, along with another passenger named Anthony, try to revive him to no success. The plane's captain radios over that Phoenix has suffered a massive power failure, and that they will be rerouting to Los Angeles.
Alex comes back up to the front and opens Marcus' shirt, revealing that he has a chest wound. She urges the two other women to tie him up, but is stopped by Anthony, who reveals that he is an air marshal. Anthony tells everyone to go back to their seats, while at the same time, Marcus reanimates as a walker and opens his eyes.
The undead Marcus attempts to bite Suzanne, who pushes him back. As Anthony runs up to help, Alex yells at them not to let him bite them. The trio succeeds in pushing Marcus back into the bathroom stall and lock it. Alex notices that she has blood on her arm, and looks over at Deirdre, who has been scratched by Marcus during the scuffle. Alex tells Anthony to tie up Deirdre, while explaining that what happened to Marcus will also happen to her.
Anthony goes to get a first aid kit to clean Deirdre's wound, while Alex tells her to radio the captain and tell him to land as soon as possible. Deirdre does so, then reports back that the power is going out in other cities and that there is no place to land. Jake and Alex then stare at each other in fright.
As Suzanne tries in vain to call to the undead Marcus behind the door, Jake asks Alex how she knew what would happen. She refuses to answer. Suzanne tries to open the door, but both Anthony and Alex stop her and gently pull her away. Alex stares up at the ceiling while wondering what to do. Suddenly, the growling stops in the stall and Suzanne calls to the undead Marcus again.
When she doesn't hear an answer, she goes to open the door in a panic despite Alex's attempt to stop her. As she does so, Marcus lunges out of the stall, knocks her down and bites her on the neck as she stares up in shock. Anthony pushes nearby passengers out of the way and tells them to get back, then puts several rounds into the walker, to no effect. Marcus lunges at him and they fall to the ground. As he attempts to bite him, Alex tells him to shoot it in the head, but he quickly discovers that he has no bullets left in his weapon.
Thinking quickly, Jake grabs a crochet needle from a nearby passenger's bag and passes it over to Alex, who uses it to stab Marcus in the head and kill him for good. As they reel from what has happened, Alex realizes that Anthony's gunfire has pierced a nearby window, and it is starting to crack. As Suzanne lays on the ground bleeding out, Alex puts her out of her misery while Anthony stares in shock. After telling him that she "saved" Suzanne from a Fate Worse than Death, the cracking window finally breaks.
Alarm bells begin to ring as the passengers strap themselves in and Alex yells at Jake to get to his seat. As they sit down, she places an oxygen mask over his face and reveals that she took the seat that was intended for his mother on the plane. She apologizes for what happened and says that he should have been with her. Jake tells her that his mother and father are together, and that he'll be with them soon.
At that moment, Nick Clark is looking for drugs in his neighborhood when he hears the roar of the airplane's engines and looks upwards. As the plane pitches and dives, Deirdre takes off her oxygen mask and stares blankly ahead, while Alex and Jake hold hands. Nick stares in confusion as the plane vanishes out of sight, then watches National Guard soldiers walk by before sneaking off...
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim: It's hard to feel bad for Marcus when he dies, considering that he somehow got onto an airplane while suffering from a massive chest wound and clear signs of the infection, didn't bother to tell anyone, and no one stopped him when he boarded.
- Chekhov's Gun: Connie (an older passenger who's seen knitting) has her crochet needle taken by Jake much later in the series when the undead Marcus attempts to attack Anthony, and Alex uses it as an Improvised Weapon to kill the walker.
- Decoy Protagonist: Jake is set up as the lead character in the webseries, but Alex soon assumes the active role (by virtue of knowing more than anyone about what's happening), and Jake is relegated to The Lancer position.
- Dissonant Serenity: The music played while the plane is going down is eerily calm (and is a reused piece from the episode "The Dog", when the Manawa and Salazar families watch the power grid fail in the downtown L.A. core). Additionally, while everyone panics onboard, Alex and Jake calmly hold hands and look around.
- Face Death with Dignity: When Deirdre realizes the plane is going to crash, she calmly takes off her oxygen mask and stares straight ahead, knowing that she's dead anyway because of the infection.
- False Reassurance: The stewardesses and Anthony try to reassure the passengers after it's revealed that Marcus was bit, but this doesn't last long before pandemonium sets in.
- Foreshadowing: Anthony (the air marshal) is seen pointedly ignoring one of the stewardesses and staring straight ahead as the plane takes off, several episodes before his role on the plane is revealed.
- Hidden Depths: It's made clear early on that Alex knows more about the infection than anyone else on the plane.
- Holding Hands: Alex and Jake do this at the end of the episode.
- How We Got Here: The webseries explains the circumstances that led to Flight 462 crashing (and what Nick saw in the sky just after the National Guard began setting up safezones.
- Interquel: Judging from the fact that the power grid goes out in Los Angeles a short while before the plane is due to land, the plot takes place sometime during the events of the third episode ("The Dog"). It's later revealed that the ending takes place at the exact same time when the National Guard have arrived in the Clark's neighborhood and Nick is out searching for drugs.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Suzanne gets this when she opens the door to let the undead Marcus out, despite Alex telling her that he's dead. The look on her face as her dead husband chomps on her neck says everything about how badly she screwed up.
- Mercy Kill: Alex does this to Suzanne after the latter is bit by her undead husband.
- No OSHA Compliance: The stewardesses somehow manage to lock the zombified Marcus into the washroom using a lock on the outside of the door.
- Actually, real life planes have this. Flip the LAVATORY sign on the door up on any airplane, slide the switch and you have a locked (or unlocked) bathroom door.
- Oh, Crap!: When Alex realizes that Anthony's gunfire has pierced one of the windows in the plane, and that it's starting to crack.
- Poor Communication Kills:
- Marcus somehow gets onto the airplane while suffering from a chest wound and clear signs of a fever, yet he never discloses this to any of the stewardesses and instead goes into a bathroom, where he dies and reanimates.
- Alex also refuses to tell the other passengers (including Anthony, an air marshal) exactly what the walkers are and how they can be dispatched until the need arises. As a result, Anthony expends an entire clip of ammo shooting into the chest of the undead Marcus, and Alex tells him to shoot it in the head after he's pinned on the ground by the walker and his clip is out of bullets.
- Trailers Always Spoil: A preview clip of season two revealed in a quick shot that Alex was one of the survivors of the plane crash (and is helping Daniel, Alicia and Chris fight off a horde), two weeks before the webisodes actually finished airing.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: It's never revealed what happened to Jake's parents, although he later tells Alex that he presumes they're dead and will be "with them soon".
Alex: And you'll be there soon.
