Fear The Walking Dead, Season Six: Who’s THE WORST?
By Liam O'Leary
4) Teddy
Teddy almost fooled me. Even knowing what he was doing, he almost fooled me.
But I’ll get to that in a bit.
First, let me say that people like Teddy are why utopianism is so dangerous. Utopianism believes that either you, your leader(s), or your ideology will create a perfect world, a perfect society, or a paradise. Whether people realize it or not, all of the great evils of the twentieth century (And some over the last decade) were born out of this idea. Yes, the ideologies might have varied, but in their own way, they were all trying to create what, in their eyes, was a “perfect” world.
What specifically makes utopianism so dangerous is that, because its adherents believe they will create a perfect world/society, they also tend to believe that whatever they do in furtherance of that goal, no matter how heinous, cruel, or inhumane it is, is “good,” because they’re doing it.
In Teddy’s case, he believed that he could create a perfect world, but he needed to destroy everything that was still around to do it.
His first attempt (After his original plan was derailed by Walter stealing the keys to the Pennsylvania’s nuclear arsenal) was to use rats, carrying the black plague, to infect survivors in Dallas and the Civic Republic. Those who were infected would then become plague walkers, which, like the flu walkers in season four of The Walking Dead, would be capable of spreading the disease that killed them through their blood, which would make even killing them at close range dangerous.
While that failed, Riley regained the keys, and Teddy was allowed to go back to his original plan: Destroying North America (And everyone in it) with NUCLEAR WARHEADS.
Honestly, I probably could have led with that and been done, but just think about that for a second: Teddy wanted to, essentially, carry out the nuclear hellfire that people spent fifty years trying to avoid in the Cold War. Now, imagine someone doing that, knowing what the aftermath will be, and thinking they’re doing what’s right.
That’s what’s evil is.