The Walking Dead Villains: Who’s The Worst? Part 8

Simon

Okay ::SPOILER ALERT:: Simon is, far and away, the most irredeemable villain, not just in this season of The Walking Dead, but, all seasons.

That’s right, Simon’s dethroning my old nemesis, Martin, as “King of The ‘That Guy‘s“. If you know of my disdain for Martin as a character, you know that I do NOT say that lightly.

But, how, you might ask, is Simon able to take the title ” the most irredeemable villain, not just in this season of The Walking Dead, but, all seasons“? It’s actually quite easy: He takes the worst aspects of several other villains, and combines them into one truly evil man.

Let’s start with the least despicable thing he did this season.

In episode 12, “The Key”, Simon attempted to, essentially, usurp Negan. This isn’t an inherently bad thing if he did so to broker a truce, but…well, suffice it to say, that’s not why he did it.

What makes this bad in and of itself is the manner in which he tried to do it. He didn’t try to openly challenge Negan for leadership, or assume control in a situation where (Like when the herd surrounded The Sanctuary) The Saviors had no other option. No, Simon saw Rick coming and let him separate Negan from the convoy. If this sounds in any way familiar, it’s because this is kind of what Spencer tried to do to Rick last season, i.e. let someone else do the dirty work and then stroll in as some noble torchbearer of the leader’s memory.

It’s one of the sleaziest ways for someone to wrest control of a group from another person. Though, that’s nothing compared to why he wanted to do it.

Simon’s motive for trying to subtly usurp Negan wasn’t to negotiate a cease-fire, or because he disagreed with Negan’s extortion ring. Nope, Simon’s reason was that Negan wasn’t being violent enough!

Whereas Negan, reasoning that people are a valuable (And, frankly limited) resource, didn’t want to slaughter Hilltop if he could avoid it. Simon, supposedly angry that his men were being held hostage, thought Negan was being too lenient, and decided that the only way to teach Maggie a lesson, was by slaughtering everyone at the Hilltop.

I think at this time, I should take an aside an mention the tiny detail of Simon’s clear love of massacring people.

Look at the picture at the top for a moment. That is a picture of Simon smiling as he ordered The Scavengers gunned down like animals. I don’t think I need to say much else.

But…I’m going to.

You see, if this was the only incident, it would be bad, but, not quite so bad.

However, Simon has a history of this kind of behavior!

Way back in Season Six’s “Last Day On Earth”, when we first met Simon, we found him enthusiastically pummeling the last survivor of the library group, before ultimately killing him.

Then, we have the men of Oceanside. Up until the second to last episode of the season, I merely speculated that Simon was the perpetrator. Thankfully, Negan confirmed my suspicions, calling Simon a “demented, broken, goddamned ghoul” as he reminisced about the latter’s heinous actions.

Normally, I try to avoid bringing up prior bad acts, but, all of this is too much for me to ignore. It shows a pattern of behavior, and that behavior is one of excessive, unwarranted violence, and a clear blood lust.

Anyway, back to the attack on Hilltop…

Remember how I said that the reason Negan didn’t win the title of most irredeemable was because he intended the tainted weapons to only be a threat? Yeah, well, Simon never intended for them to merely be a threat. He always wanted to use their new biological weapons to exterminate Hilltop.

For all I said about Negan, his ultimate goal was to extort people. Simon? His was strictly to murder them.

Yet, the worst thing about Simon, might have been what he did to his own team.

As Maggie tried to get Simon to stand down by threatening his, I repeat, his troops, Simon not only said they essentially meant nothing, but then, fired at them, with tainted arrows!

Why is this so bad? Well, remember me saying he was supposedly angry that Maggie had his men? Well, this showed that his reason for usurping Negan, his reason for massacring The Scavengers, and his reason for launching an assault on Hilltop…was a lie.

Simon wasn’t angry that his guys were captives, he was angry because he was being denied the opportunity to commit mass murder.

Last season, I said we hadn’t seen anyone who enjoyed killing as much as Negan. Clearly, I spoke too soon. Simon enjoys killing people the way normal people enjoy eating ice cream. He will kill anybody if it suits him. Hell, even people in his own group, if they run out of usefulness, can go on the chopping block. Like Martin, Simon doesn’t seem to do this out of mental instability or disease, he simply doesn’t care…about anyone. The only thing that stops someone from being someone Simon wants to kill, is if their usefulness outweighs his desire to kill them.

What else can I say? In spite of all the unhinged, megalomaniacal, creepy, inhuman, violent, selfish, bloodthirsty people we’ve seen in The Walking Dead, Simon, by a wide margin, is the most irredeemable of them all.

Next: The Walking Dead Villains: Who's The Worst? Part 7

So, what do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Is there someone else you think should be on this list? Is there someone else throughout the series you think is worse? Let me know in the comments!

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!