The Walking Dead round table: Most hated character

Lauren’s choice:

There are various characters on The Walking Dead that evoke strong reactions for me, but interestingly enough, “hate” isn’t one of the reactions I normally feel when watching the show… or at least it wasn’t until I started really thinking about it. When considering my gut reaction to this question, it was difficult for me because my strongest feeling toward any of the characters was more one of fear than of hate. (Maybe I envision myself more at the level of one of the characters, and how I would feel in their place? That’s the only thing that I can think of to explain why I feel fear so much more strongly than hate) Therefore, I’m choosing to write about the character who I fear the most – or, I suppose, who I would fear the most if I were to meet him in person.

In any case, I’m sure I’m not alone to say that of all of the TWD characters, I fear The Governor the most. My husband laughs at me because I’ve told him not to buy me the Pop Vinyl of The Governor – I just don’t want that one-eyed figure looking at me! – and I can’t even bring myself to follow David Morrissey on Twitter. I’m sure he’s a perfectly nice person, but he’s done such a solid job playing a psychopath, that I’ll be honest, he still scares me even when he’s not The Governor. I understand that it’s irrational, however, that’s just the way my mind works.

I can remember the first time I watched the episodes in which The Governor appears, specifically the ones in Woodbury where his crazy side really shone through. I remember thinking that just when I thought he couldn’t do anything more horrible, he did. I know that I don’t need to list all of The Governor’s atrocities for those of you who are reading this. Let’s just suffice it to say that when you’re keeping heads as souvenirs… that counts as a new level of insane.

There’s something about The Governor that I found even more frightening than the walkers. At least I can understand the walkers. Sure, I wouldn’t want to meet them in person, but their motivation is about as straightforward as they come. It’s quite simple – they want to eat you. The Governor, on the other hand, could play the charming leader and meanwhile be plotting countless ways that he was going to kill you as soon as you were no longer of any use to him, which may or may not have involved torturing you mercilessly for his own enjoyment.

The Governor apparently felt no guilt whatsoever about using others’ suffering as his own entertainment. As Rick discovered, you could fool yourself into believing that he would negotiate with you, but really he was never going to compromise when he wanted something, like The Prison for example. Any semblance of cooperation that he exhibited was purely a ploy to make his hostile takeover less hostile and more complete.

Yes, the world’s a rough place after the zombie apocalypse, but there’s surviving by whatever means necessary, and then there’s going out of your way to inflict pain and misery on others for the fun of it. Of course it’s pretty unwise to trust anyone in the apocalypse unless you absolutely have to, and The Governor is a pretty good reason for this distrust of strangers all by himself. I’m pretty sure that most of the characters on the show who have met The Governor would agree with me on this.

Next: YOUR choices