Fear The Walking Dead season seven: Who isn’t the worst?

Fear the Walking Dead – Victor Strand

Last season, I named Strand as my most redeemable villain of Fear The Walking Dead because, in spite of the many ways he screwed things up, Strand was trying to do good; it was just that his selfish nature kept causing him to do things wrong, and make them worse in the process. In that respect, at the very least, history has repeated itself.

This season began with Strand searching across the wasteland in search of Alicia, alongside Will, a young man Alicia met inside the Franklin Hotel’s fallout shelter. Strand bravely marched into a foggy, walker-filled field in the desperate hope that none of the walkers were her. The pair returned to the tower, but Strand, his selfishness getting the better of him again, threw his new friend from the roof of the tower, knowing that if Alicia knew he’d killed someone she loved, she’d never come to the tower. At the time, he wanted to run the tower how he saw fit, unencumbered by the morality he’d asked her to cling to so long ago.

Strand’s real problem, though, was that, no matter how much he wanted to convince himself otherwise, he didn’t want to drive Alicia away; he wanted her safe with him. Strand wanted a place where he was in charge, but he knew it meant nothing to him without Alicia. Initially, he was convinced that he needed her there to temper his more pragmatic and violent tendencies, but, eventually, Strand had to admit to himself that the reason he wanted Alicia around was that, to him, she was the closest thing he had to a family; Like the daughter he never had.

And, that desire to protect Alicia thwarted his attempts at a more ruthless running of the tower time and again. First, despite trying to throw Morgan to the walkers inside the U.S.S. Pennsylvania, and being at odds with him ever since, he invited Morgan to the tower, not to trap him but, to summon him to find Alicia and bring her back to the tower. When after going to great lengths to prepare for war against Morgan and Alicia and their entire group, Strand was ready to throw his victory away in exchange for Alicia agreeing to stay at the tower. This last caving to his desire to secure Alicia earned him the ire of Wes and the remaining rangers, but, seeing Alicia in such dire straits from her infection, Strand was not only willing to appeal to Daniel (who absolutely hated Strand) but fight his way up the tower to get Alicia to safety.

Don’t get me wrong; Strand did a lot of messed-up things this season, but, ultimately, he did it in the hope of creating a place worthy of Alicia. The way he saw it, the awful things he was doing were necessary evils that he had to do to make things safe for her. He knew that she could never bring herself to be that ruthlessly pragmatic, but, he also knew that he could never bring himself to ask her to, so, he had to get those necessary evils out of the way before he could have a place where Alicia could be safe.

Just like last season, as far as Strand was concerned, he was doing the right thing, but, as we all saw, he was going about it in the worst possible way.