The Walking Dead Villains: Who’s The Worst? Part 9

Alpha

Alpha is just…a terrible excuse for a human being. Period. Saying that, though, is just scratching the surface.

Alpha is the leader of The Whisperers, a group of people in The Walking Dead who have taken to wearing the skins of walkers as masks and camouflage so that they can walk amongst the dead undetected. They have a very survivalist mentality, where anyone deemed “weak” or otherwise a liability, is left behind, even babies.

Their hierarchy seems fairly loose beyond Alpha and Beta, though they seem to have a system wherein other Whisperers can challenge Alpha for supremacy if they question her judgment or leadership. This would seem normal (And, comparatively, acceptable) by their standards…except for the fact that Alpha, even by the rules she seems to have set, cheats to ensure she remains on top.

She’s also thinks nothing about killing people. She killed Hilde, a resident of Hilltop, and her husband, Miles, just so she could use Hilde’s hair as a wig to infiltrate The Kingdom, and, ultimately, kidnap Tara, Tammy Rose, DJ, Ozzy, Alek, Adeline, Rodney, Frankie, Enid, and Henry…and decapitate them.

Why? Well, because she was angry Lydia rejected her lifestyle and chose to stay with Henry, and, because she wanted to use their heads to mark the border between The Coalition of communities, and The Whisperers’ territory.

Now, you might think that, like Jocelyn, Alpha became this cruel, brutal monster after being forced to eke out a harsh existence in the zombie apocalypse…but, you’d be wrong.

As we learn from Lydia, this cruel, violent, murderous streak existed within Alpha even before the apocalypse began. We see in a flashback from the beginning of the outbreak, that Alpha was always cruel, always vicious, and it seemed that this behavior was something that was going on from even before the first walker arose.

When Alpha, her husband, Frank, and Lydia were first trapped in a building in Baltimore during the early days of the outbreak, Alpha was verbally abusive to Frank, and, when she killed Matias, one of the people in their group, she made a point of commenting on how weak and pathetic she found him; Considering that she killed Frank a few hours later while the rest of the group were trying to fight of a turned Matias, it seems pretty obvious that while she was talking to Matias, her commentary on him being weak and pathetic was also meant for Frank.

Crueler still was that, for approximately the next ten years, she apparently tried to convince Lydia that it was Frank who was the cruel one, lying to Lydia about her own father as a means of controlling her. When you combine that with her lectures to The Whisperers about she was the one who kept them alive, it starts to paint the picture of a supremely manipulative person.

But, it isn’t simply one aspect of Alpha that makes her so bad, it’s the whole package: She’s cruel, she’s manipulative, she’s brutally violent, she’s callous, and she’s a megalomaniac who, when met with someone who defies her, she responds with extreme violence. Want proof? Look no further than Alpha’s husband, Frank, whom she killed almost immediately after he refused to abandon their original group.

Make no mistake, Alpha is, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst, most irredeemable villain in Season 9 of The Walking Dead, and, maybe, of the series entirely.

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 Amazon here, and, on iTunes here!