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

Madison

That’s right, Madison. We learned a great deal about Fear The Walking Dead’s main character this season, and not all of it was good.

We learned that Madison has some skeletons in her closet, which, while answering some questions, also raised more.

But let’s back up a minute and focus on Madison’s actions in the more recent past, specifically in regards to Broke Jaw Ranch.

Not long after arriving at the ranch, Madison began talking to Nick and Alicia about “taking over”.

…Huh.

This talk disappeared for a while, that is until the Trimbols were found murdered a little while after her family’s arrival. At that point, despite knowing that Troy was the culprit, rather than try to find some means of dealing with his problems, Madison sought to exploit them.

She used the murders to convince the ranchers that Qaletaqa and his people were lurking in the shadows waiting to kill anyone who even left the ranch, and earned a position of influence at the ranch in the process. Suddenly, her earlier “takeover” talk was starting to make sense.

Though useful in reunifying the ranch her scheme was, when the time came to make peace with Black Hat, all that distrust and hate she’d used was still left behind.

But, let’s put a pin in that and address the aforementioned skeleton in Madison’s closet (Trust me, it all ties together).

After getting into an argument with Alicia and Nick about Madison covering for Troy, she revealed to her kids that, when she was around Alicia’s age, she murdered their grandfather, to put a stop to him abusing their grandmother. Not only that, but, she insisted that she’d do it again, if she felt it would protect Nick and Alicia.

Admirable as this sounds, the terrible fate of the ranch and what followed put that into question. As mentioned earlier, Troy sicced a horde of infected on the ranch, killing nearly everyone who lived there.

When Madison found out about this and expressed her disgust with Troy’s actions, Troy turned it around on her and basically said she was responsible for what happened because of her decision to let Troy live in the first place.

While I won’t begrudge her act of mercy, I will begrudge the fact that, rather than attempt to try to find some way of dealing with Troy’s psychological problems in the first place, she exploited them. Maybe, if she’d done something earlier, or helped Jake and Jeremiah do something, perhaps Troy might not have decided to draw the infected, and maybe everyone at the ranch might have survived?

Of course, when Troy threw this accusation, Madison’s response was…a bit extreme: She cracked Troy upside the head with a hammer, killing him.

And, now, we tie this all back together.

You see, after watching his mother murder his friend, Nick raised a hard question: Was her violence for his and Alicia’s benefit? Or, had she always been a killer, and the apocalypse just gave her license to be one with near impunity?

To be honest, as I write this, I don’t quite know what to think of Madison. I mean, I understand why she’s done what she’s done, but, when you boil things down, is her reasoning that far removed from Troy’s?

Sure Troy acted largely out of “If I can’t have the ranch, no one can”, but, his assertion that he’d sic the horde on the ranch again if he had to is too similar to Madison’s statement about her father to ignore. I don’t doubt Troy could have convinced himself that what he was doing was, in some twisted way, to protect his brother. And if that’s the case…where’s the difference? They’re both still killing people to protect others, in their minds.

Like I said: I don’t know what to think.

Next: Architect Of Destruction