Fear The Walking Dead Villains: Who’s The Worst, Part 2
By Liam O'Leary
Chris
I saved the best (Worst?) for last.
Throughout the second season of Fear The Walking Dead, we watched Chris deteriorate until the good kid he started out as was erased. It started with him angrily dumping his mom’s body into the Pacific, followed by punching his father in a fit of rage, from there…it all went downhill.
While the group held Reed captive, hoping to trade him to get Travis and Alicia back, Chris couldn’t take his taunting, and shot him in the face.
Unfortunately, Chris’s aim was, apparently, not that good, as he only blew a large gash into Reed’s cheek. Not surprisingly, Reed turned.
Was this intentional on Chris’s part? I’m not sure. If you recall, Chris had already put down Alan in the wreckage of Flight 462, so, it wasn’t as if he didn’t know that he had to shoot him in the head.
This becomes a little more complicated when Chris tells Madison that Reed was going to turn, and that that was why he shot him.
He was…technically correct: With Reed having been stabbed with a crowbar (In the kidneys, I think(?)), he probably was going to turn, just not as immediately as Chris implied.
As the rest of the group came to realize this, Chris began to feel mildly persecuted, not understanding why everyone was so upset. Madison reassured him that she believed his version of events.
However, when she expressed concerns about the incident to Travis, Chris felt betrayed. Feeling so would have been fine. Would have.
Sadly, it seemed as if this feeling combined with Chris’s lingering resentment of Madison’s relationship with his dad. As the group fought off the infected townsfolk Celia poisoned, Madison was taken down by one.
Chris initially came to help, yet, paused, seemingly mulling over the idea of letting Madison get bitten. Because he felt betrayed that Madison had exposed his lie, Chris was willing to let her get bitten by an infected.
Alicia managed to make the save, but, a little while later, Chris confronted her about the incident.
After first trying to deny what he was doing, when Alicia insisted that she knew what she saw, Chris grabbed her and told her she can’t tell the group.
When Alicia asks what would happen if she did, Chris gives her the ominous reply of “I don’t want to hurt anyone“.
…Great stuff. Really grea–no.
Of course, Chris is only just getting started!
That first night at the Abigail hacienda, as Madison and Alicia slept, they wake up to find someone watching them.
Who? Why, none other than Chris…wielding a knife.
It looks like he was planning on stabbing either Madison or Alicia, perhaps hoping one would turn, and kill the other.
Chris obviously didn’t succeed, but, things didn’t get any better.
He fled into the countryside, with Travis trying to catch up to him. When he did, he found Chris holding a child hostage to try to convince the boy’s father to mislead Travis. Would he have hurt him? How long was planning to hold him hostage?
As bad as that was, it pales in comparison to when Chris and Travis met Brandon, Derek, and James.
Within a day or so of meeting the trio, Travis could see their carelessness and lack of concern for others rubbing off on Chris.
As Elias Suarez desperately attempted to force the group out of his farm and away from his chickens, he shot James, causing Chris to shoot him in turn.
It was here that we truly saw just how far Chris had fallen. While he was clearly bothered by killing Reed, and was at his wits end after getting close to stabbing Madison, we got none of that here.
Chris didn’t care. He didn’t want his father to be angry with him, but, he cared nothing for the poor farmer he’d just murdered.
Things only got worse from there. In the following week, just one week, Chris was fully supporting Brandon and Derek’s decision to put James down, despite the fact he could have survived his wound; He was willing to overlook a murder of one of his new friends to appease the other two.
Chris was so willing to appease them that, as Travis tried to protect James from Brandon and Derek, that he tricked him, to help the two gun down their friend.
Chris pretended to understand what his father was trying to teach him. He faked understanding that everyone’s life has value so that he could help his new friends gun down their old one. It’s so awful that I can’t even find a word to properly describe it. How can betray you own family like that, just to appease people you barely even know? Hell, Chris himself, in the midst of his lie, raises the question of what Brandon and Derek would do to him! And yet, it doesn’t seem to occur to him.
Chris is…difficult to describe.
He started out normal, if a bit defiant. However, losing his mom was something he clearly couldn’t come to grips with.
In short order, Chris went off the rails. He became increasingly violent, and perhaps worse, increasingly more deceptive. He lied about killing Reed, he lied about not helping Madison, and he lied to help Brandon and Derek.
He quickly seemed to be reveling in the freedom the apocalypse gave him. Without the moral compass of his mother and with his resentment towards his father, he spiraled out of control. He seemed to want lash out and the apocalypse gave him the outlet to do so.
When he met Brandon and Derek, he found kindred souls: Young men who didn’t care about anyone else around them, and used violence to serve their needs. In the end, the sense of belonging he felt with them overrode even the love of his father. He felt his father was holding him back, and that it’d be better for both if he walked away. At that moment, Chris resigned himself to a darkness he’d never return from.
Next: The Worst OF Us