Fear The Walking Dead Villains: Who ISN’T The Worst, Part 2

Chris

Okay, spoiler alert, Chris is my most redeemable villain of Season Two of Fear The Walking Dead. Easily. And, I’m going to explain why.

First and foremost, unlike the others, we know Chris wasn’t coming into this with hostile intent. A series of unfortunate circumstances conspired to send Chris spiraling into darkness, circumstances that were, largely, out of his control.

Things started out with Chris having to put his mother to rest. Chronologically, this only a few hours after she had to be put down and without hearing her explanation.

That is crucial.

To Chris, he never got a chance to say goodbye to his mom before his dad shot her, and without hearing from her why it had to happen. This left him confused and angry.

And remember, the group was making for the Abigail only a few hours after this happened. Chris had no real time to absorb what had happened before the infected stormed the beach and forced everyone to flee.

Fast forward approximately three or four days — Still not nearly enough time to deal with your mom’s death — and Chris is forced to mercy kill a stranger in the wreckage of Flight 462.

Fast forward little more than a day later, his failure to shoot leads to him being threatened by pirates while they take his dad. Still no real time to process what he’s been through or what he’s done. Oh, and don’t forget, feeling like if he’d just shot, none of that whole “pirate” stuff would have happened. That becomes important later.

By the following day, the group is freed and they’ve captured one of the pirates. It just so happens that this pirate is the most violent and cruel of the bunch, i.e. the one conventional wisdom would say most deserves to get hurt.

Sure enough, spending some alone time with the vile pirate is too much for Chris, who shoots him in the cheek, killing him.

While Chris lies because he knows he’d get in trouble, you can probably figure out where I’m going here. It seems like Chris, hoping to rectify his earlier mistake and vent his anger and confusion at his situation, unleashed his rage on the best candidate he could find, Reed. Chris, however, was still human, and was horrified by what he’d done, as evidenced by his reaction to it.

Sadly, here is where things begin to go off the rails for Chris. Rather than be honest, he lied to Madison about why he killed Reed. When Madison told Travis, who eventually confronted Chris, he believed Madison betrayed him.

I can only assume that all the craziness that Chris had been asked to absorb in such a short time caught up to him. His response, apparently, was to become increasingly suspicious, aggressive, and to double-down on lying.

Before long, Chris was letting infected attack Madison and threatening Alicia. When he got caught in Madison and Alicia’s room with a knife, things went from bad, to worse.

While Chris was still stable enough to realize what he’d done was bad, his reaction wasn’t constructive: Trying to hold a kid hostage so he could avoid Travis and strike out on his own.

Travis tried to help, but, ultimately, he couldn’t.

Perhaps the influence of Brandon, Derek, and James was a factor. Perhaps if Travis could have guided Chris on his own until Chris understood what he was trying to teach him, Chris might have turned out alright.

That’s why I find Chris the most redeemable: He could have been better. A whole maelstrom of bad things came together for Chris in far too short a time for him to properly grapple with them all.

His first response was not that good, and it only sought to further his spiral. There was the chance for Chris to return to something close to normal, but, bad influences took a fragile kid and steered him back down the dark path his dad was desperately trying to pull him back from.

Chris didn’t start out bad, he didn’t intend to go bad, and he didn’t revel in going bad…he just went bad. What makes him redeemable is the fact he could have just as easily gone good. Sometimes, it can just happen.

But, what do you guys think? Am I right? Am I way off? Were you thinking of someone else? Let me know in the comments!

Next: Fear The Walking Dead Villains: Who's The Worst, Part 2

And, of course, if you enjoyed this, and want to hear my ideas on how to survive a zombie apocalypse, you can always pick up a copy of my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse! You can also find it on Kindle here, and, on iTunes here!