Fear The Walking Dead What If: What if Chris is one of the Pale Riders?

Fear The Walking Dead “What If”: What if Chris was one of The Pale Riders?

Firstly, how Chris falls in with the Pale Riders is entirely up to you: Maybe he got lost, maybe he got picked by some other group (Or even the first vestiges of the Pale Riders themselves) and found his way to western Texas. Personally, I imagine him reaching San Diego, finding it in ruins, and wandering aimlessly east until getting picked up by the Pale Riders, but, that’s just me.

Either way, Chris finds his way into the Pale Riders, and is taken under their wing, but, what would this look like?

To figure that out, we need to look back at where Chris was before he “died”: He had rejected his father’s pleas to be more compassionate, and had, instead, joined with the more selfish, pragmatic, and violent pair of Brandon and Derek; He was angry that Madison and Alicia had, in his mind, betrayed him and driven away from their safe haven at Thomas Abigail’s hacienda, forcing him and his father to have to survive on their own in the wilderness; And, he would have spent likely several months wandering the inhospitable terrain of Mexico and California before running into some group that was willing to bring him east, or by the Pale Riders themselves. Whatever the case is, he would have been a changed (and probably very angry) young man.

That anger is important. By now, he will have been years removed from the good influence his father had been, and the last friends he would have had would have been, well, a pair of selfish, somewhat trigger-happy, douchebags. The Pale Riders would likely not be that different.

From what we’ve seen of them, they are violent and hostile to (at least) the Pioneers, if not everyone who is not one of them, and they also seem to partake in terrorizing other people (as we see with Sherry in the trailer), suggesting they get some kick out of instilling fear in people. These people would become the closest thing to family that Chris would have had as he became an adult, and their violent, possibly xenophobic, possibly sadistic, tendencies would have now replaced the morals his father had tried to instill in him.

Now that we have some idea of how Chris would be changed, we need to discuss how this would affect his interactions with Morgan’s group.

Honestly, I imagine any interactions Chris would have with Morgan’s group would not be any more violent or harrowing than any other encounter he’d had with anyone else…that is, until he realizes Alicia is one of them.

Considering the last set of interactions the pair had back in season two, I don’t think it’s much of a leap to assume that Chris would not be happy to see his “sister” once again. After noticing his willingness to let her mother nearly be mauled by an infected and refusing to ignore it, then, finding him standing over her bed with a knife in hand and causing him to panic and flee the Abigail hacienda, I can imagine him (especially with Madison not being around) seeing Alicia as the architect of his misery, and becoming obsessed with exacting revenge on her, and anyone who stood in his way — Morgan’s group, the Pioneers, anyone.

It’s possible that, if this were to happen, Chris would become the one leading attacks on the Pioneers, seeing them as “harboring” his enemy, and becoming more and more bent on destroying them to get to Alicia, his attacks against the Pioneers becoming more intense.

Once Alicia, Strand, and Daniel realize that the person leading the attacks against the Pioneers is actually Chris, I’d expect Alicia and Daniel to try to reach out to him, which, while it would probably give us some nice flashbacks to Chris’s actual fate after his “death”, would likely fail. Chris, having spent so long away from his father, finding out about his death (And don’t think for a minute that that would improve his attitude), and having developed this obsession with how Alicia (And Madison) ruined his life, I think any pleas for peace or mercy would fall on deaf ears.

But, how would it end?

Well, I can’t imagine such a good opportunity would be passed up, so, I figure that, if Chris were part of the Pale Riders, he would probably become the primary villain of the second half of the season, maybe even taking over the Pale Riders (He probably would have been with them long enough to gain some measure of authority by now!) and driving them in an all-out assault to get his revenge, leading raids and sieges across the Pioneers’ turf to ensure they couldn’t stop him.

He’d probably wind up in a confrontation with Alicia, who, after so long trying to get rid of her rage, and possibly not having Morgan there to guide her, falls back into that rage to deal with Chris and put a stop to his path of destruction. Whether she’d kill him, or simply think she’d killed him (Which would open the door for him to become a recurring villain next season) is up to you.

Whatever the case would be, I think that if Chris were to be revealed as one of the Pale Riders, it would be a huge (And welcome) curveball for Fear The Walking Dead, bringing back an original member of the group, but, giving him a much darker edge, and turning him from a family member, into a twisted villain.

But, that’s just me. Do you have any “What Ifs” for Fear? If so, I’d like to hear them. And, if you want more of my writings, specifically about surviving a zombie apocalypse, why not pick up a copy of my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse!? You can get it at Amazon here and on iTunes here!