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

Fear the Walking Dead – Arno

Arno’s story is a tragic one.

While he was a member of Teddy Maddox’s death cult, he believed in Teddy’s prophesied “New Beginning,” the idea that, once Teddy had launched his weapons of mass destruction, those he left behind could begin anew. He also legitimately shared Teddy’s faith in Alicia to build that new beginning. When one of the other cultists attempted to feed her to Senator Vasquez’s walker and got killed for his troubles, Arno was the one who called the rest of them off, recognizing Alicia as the one their mentor had chosen to lead them and working towards helping her with the transition to taking over the cult as best as he could.

This friendly relationship with Alicia wouldn’t be long-lived, however. After recovering from amputating her arm, Alicia convinced the cult to help her locate the walker of Senator Vasquez in the vain hope that some lingering shred of the Senator’s memory remained enough to lead them to P.A.D.R.E., the government’s safe zone should the worst happen. This proved to be a disaster, as many of the cultists became infected in the attempt.

This led to Arno trying to hunt down Alicia to get revenge for his friends, who died in what turned out to be a fool’s errand. Despite what one might have thought from the fact that Arno was part of a death cult, it wasn’t that that made him violent. The loss of the friends he’d made within that cult did it. In his mind, he had to do right by his fallen friends and punish Alicia for her failure.

But, the most revealing thing happened just before his death in episode 711, “Ofelia.” In that episode, Arno lamented that the “new beginning” the cult was promised wasn’t going to come. To Arno, it was up to him to look out for the remainder of the cult after Alicia’s failure; he needed to step up and find them a place to be safe, a place to make the new beginning Teddy spoke of, even if he had to resort to violent methods to achieve it.

Does this make the things he did good? No, of course not, but it shows you that Arno wasn’t a man out for material gain or glory, or even to carry on the warped philosophy of his mentor, but rather to make a home for his friends and give them the new beginning he believed they deserved.