Fear The Walking Dead: Who’s The Worst? Part 3

Troy

If there’s one word to describe Troy Otto, it would be unstable.

Troy is the younger son of Jeremiah Otto and head of his ranch’s militia. All-in-all, he’s not bad at leading them, and his father’s survivalist philosophy has made him a good hand at all sorts of military hardware and weapons.

However, his parents’ alcoholism, distance, and abusive behavior when Troy was little also rubbed off on him, leaving him something of a broken adult.

There may be no better evidence of this then our very first encounter with him.

In the Season Three premiere, “Eye Of The Beholder”, Troy had his men gunning down people they deemed likely to die in order to see whether their age, race, height, or weight determined how quickly or slowly they turned.

Troy callously had dozens of people killed in some warped attempt to conduct “science”. If Troy had been killing his “subjects” in a violent outburst, it might have been less frightening than the cold, clinical way he ordered their executions, as if he were putting down animals infected with some deadly contagion.

Yet, he had room for violence in him, too. As evidenced by his brutal murder of the Trimbols as they attempted to flee Broke Jaw Ranch in the hopes of finding greener pastures.

While we don’t see the murders go down, we do see the aftermath: Mike is found with a bullet hole in his face, his parents, Vern and Kathy, were left turned in their RV and his sister, Gretchen, is found eating their horse, likely killed by Troy as she tried to escape.

It was a horrible display of what Troy was capable of when he lost control of himself. When he wanted to, he became a monster capable of killing just about anyone who crossed his path.

Of course, his greatest crime came after being exiled from the ranch, i.e. siccing a horde of infected several hundred strong, on the ranch.

In an act of jealous psychosis, Troy actively steered a horde toward the valley, which got nearly everyone, including his brother, killed and eventually turned.

Actually, I have to correct myself. If Troy’s actions were simply a matter of psychosis — An act of mania  which he couldn’t truly control — that would have been forgivable.

However, as we saw in the season finale, Troy’s actions were motivated by pure jealousy, nothing more than the worst case of “If I can’t have it, no one can”.

Because of this, dozens of innocent people died agonizing deaths, either through suffocation or being devoured by the wave of dead Troy sent crashing down upon them.

I can’t entirely bring myself to say Troy is the worst person we’ve seen thus far in Fear The Walking Dead (Which I’ll explain in my corresponding article), but, I will say that Troy simply cannot be called a good person. His rather bipolar nature of callousness and violent jealousy were simply too much for him to truly be redeemable.

Next: Apples Don't Fall Far