Fear the Walking Dead: Strand was already packing

Victor Strand on Fear the Walking Dead is the character most fans and characters in the show seem to trust the least. We don’t know much about him yet. Let’s look at why people fear he may have ulterior motives.

When we met Victor Strand, the audience saw a somewhat cold and calculating, theatrical man who talked about how another man’s wife would be okay because she kept up her looks and her figure. I even thought, “Hurray, we have a villain.”

He let us know he had the power of persuasion. He could sell anything to anybody. Except insurance. So, oddly, he was saying he could sell people things they needed or things he felt they were strong enough to make their own decisions about, but if they were so weak to need insurance, he couldn’t prey on them.

It was a twisted speech if you really look at it. He was saying I can sell anything to anybody, but I have integrity. And I can tell you were the weak person who needed insurance, so let me give you some. You wanted your family to be okay in a catastrophic situation. Well, they’ll be okay; your wife will find someone to help her through this. There’s your insurance policy, pal. You’re welcome.

Then we find out that Strand really is rich. He’s not just a wannabe poser in a fancy suit. He really has a nice house and a boat. He’s damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. If he doesn’t have the goods to back it up, he’s hiding something and then a liability. Since he does have the goods, he’s hiding something and must have motives.

Maybe his motives are just to find some people to survive with at the end of the world. He knows it will be lonely. He didn’t plan on the group. He planned on adding Nick. Someone who could survive and be an interesting friend and protégé.

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The big reason people don’t trust Strand, other than we’ve been trained not to trust people in the world of The Walking Dead, is that it appears he was packed and preparing to leave before he was put in the pen. But Madison and Travis were already leaving when they turned back for Patrick and then were quarantined.

It’s not unreasonable that Strand would have been planning to get away from people when he saw the rioting and after he experienced whatever he might have experienced with the infected before the National Guard arrived.

My guess is that he was trying to leave when the Guard came. They tried to stop him and when he put up a fight, they put him in the pen. Doug was put in the pen for refusing to be tested and making noise. I can imagine Strand refusing to be tested.

Next: Daniel Salazar says so much with so little

So Strand may very well turn out to have motives that he’s not sharing, as Daniel put it, and be worthy of watching. He may turn out to be untrustworthy. But the evidence isn’t there to convict yet. The only evidence so far is Walking Dead instinct that teaches us to be careful at the end of the world.