Fear The Walking Dead Season Seven: Who’s The Worst?

Fear the Walking Dead – Madison Clark

I can’t help but be disappointed in Madison (Kim Dickens). After almost three seasons of being thought dead, she finally returns to Fear The Walking Dead, only to wind up on this list after just the one episode she was in. How did she get there? Easy.

As we learned in the season finale, “Gone,” in the time she’s spent away from the rest of the group, Madison found her way to Louisiana and fell under the employ of a mysterious group of people who claim to be P.A.D.R.E. Yes, the very same P.A.D.R.E. Alicia had spent the whole season searching Texas for. And at their behest, Madison has spent the time between being separated from her group and the present kidnapping children.

As we’d later learn, she began this mission for P.A.D.R.E. under the belief that, if she brought them one child, they would help her find her own; This turned out to be a lie. They needed her to do it again. She did. Again, they lied: They required her to do it repeatedly until they finally agreed to help her find Nick and Alicia. By then, Madison was so disgusted with what she’d done that she refused, knowing that neither Nick nor Alicia would want to see her after committing so many kidnappings.

If this were the end of Madison’s story with P.A.D.R.E., that’d be one thing, but it wasn’t. Even after no longer having any real incentive to carry on with P.A.D.R.E.’s nefarious quest, Madison kept doing it.

Why?! What was the point? Were they the only people in the area who could provide her with oxygen? Did she think she couldn’t make it on her own anymore without them providing her supplies? I’m grasping at straws here because, barring the line of thinking that Madison feared she wouldn’t make it back to Texas with her lungs damaged as they were, nothing else makes sense for why Madison would continue kidnapping children for a group whose incentive no longer applied.

I can’t believe that Madison got any enjoyment from kidnapping kids, but it doesn’t change the fact that even though P.A.D.R.E. had nothing to offer her to keep doing it, she did anyway. This wasn’t simply taking kids to a safe place the parents would eventually join; this was taking them from their parents and families forever, with only faded memories of the people who loved them, memories which their new caretakers would make sure to try to erase.

How could she keep doing that? I think it’s the fact that I can’t find a good enough answer for that question that puts Madison in contention for the worst villain of this season.