Ranking The ‘Fear The Walking Dead’ Characters Who Should …

We’re almost to the bitter end of Fear The Walking Dead’s 8-season run, and hoo-boy-golly-gee-whoa-nelly, what a run it’s been!

Here at the end, our heroes find themselves doing things. In a place. Somewhere near PADRE, which is either in Georgia or maybe Texas. They talk stuff at each other. On walkie-talkies. They change their minds a lot. They Mexican standoff. They mellow drama. Cool jazz.

Sometimes they try to murder kids, or protect them, or protect them before then trying to murder them or vice versa. They make up for the bad things they’ve done, because that’s what Alicia would want. They argue and flip-flop. They protect PADRE because that’s what Alicia would want. They introduce new characters who sing Alicia’s praises because that’s what Alycia Debnam-Carey’s fangirls would want.

Troy is back from the dead. He’s my favorite character now, though he should be dead and no character who already died qualifies for the list below. Otherwise, Troy would be at the top of it. I’d say he should survive, but what’s dead can never die. Or, um, what’s gone is never truly gone? You know what it is.

So who should survive the final, two-part series finale this coming Sunday? Who should win the winnings? Who should tiger-blood? Who should sit on the Iron Padre Throne? Who should become God of the Walkie-Talkies? Not Morgan, he’s gone.

Should it be Strand? He’s the only one of this miserable group that’s ever proven he can actually build and administer a functional community, though he changes his personality so often it makes me dizzy. Oh, and he went from throwing people off an office building to saying “everyone deserves a second chance” awfully conveniently. But honestly, it’s the hairdo that cinches the deal for me. You don’t get to survive the zombie apocalypse with that hairdo. Sorry, Strand.

Should it be Daniel? After all, he cured himself of dementia with green juice. Or perhaps Madison? She came back from the dead, too, and unlike most people with chronic respiratory conditions, she only needs oxygen sometimes and never after a good sledgehammer swinging party. That’s a pretty good qualifier for becoming Queen Madre de Padre. That they both conspired to kill an 8-year-old, however, may disqualify them in my book.

Or maybe it should be Alicia who, like the Man in Black, was only mostly dead when she crawled off to die at the end of Season 7. Now she’s zombie apocalypse Jesus, riding on the back of a unicorn, saving children from radiation buildings and stopping Thanos with her Girl Power charm and her one good arm. Though if it’s going to be a dead Clark kid, why not Nick? Maybe he’s just been here the whole time, hiding in the wings, covered in zombie blood and guts, preparing for his coup de tat, like some young Voldemort.

Lucianna maybe. She’s rediscovered her badass self, finally, set up a network of truckers who hand out boxes that say “take what you need, leave what you don’t” and, nevermind, that’s just too stupid. Anyone who revives that absurd nonsense deserves to die, badass or no. But not before they’ve made a documentary about helping people! (Please, AMC, can we get just one more documentary dance battle before the show ends?)

Dwight maybe? Dwight and Sherry riding off into the sunset, him with the dawning realization that he’s fallen for a sociopath, her just repeating “Dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee….” over and over again, ad infinitum. He thinks he might strangle her in her sleep because she frightens him. That look in her eye. It’s not natural. It’s not right. It’s kill or be killed, he knows this. And if he slinks off into the night, she’ll just find him again. She always does. He doesn’t know how, but she always does. She’s relentless. Dee dee dee dee dee dee…

Maybe not. Maybe they kill each other in a twisted post-apocalyptic murder-suicide.

So then who? Who survives? Well, here’s my list:

#1 Tobias

Tobias first appeared in Season 1 of Fear and never again. Madison met him at the school where she was a counselor and he warned her about the rapid downfall of society. He saw all the signs. He knew. He was wise beyond his years. He’s probably in the Rocky Mountains somewhere right now, a ruthless but just leader of a hardy, no-nonsense people who don’t talk like robots and don’t give a damn about the bad things they’ve done, because they know that in a zombie apocalypse, all that matters is survival. They know that you can do this without being monsters, but that you also have to be hard, even sometimes setting aside the normal moral codes that guide us in society, in order to survive.

And that’s all I got. Sorry, I know it’s a short list, but as far as I’m concerned, no other character on this show deserves to live. Not a single one of these boneheaded, sappy, melodramatic morons should have made it past the plane incident in Season 5. Indeed, I like to think they all actually died in the plane and the rest was just a dream. They’re all zombie food in my headcanon. And good riddance.

P.S. A reader noted that the walkie-talkies should be the only thing to survive, so we’ll make that a bonus because frankly I really like the idea of the walkie-talkies gaining sentience and becoming a unified AI hivemind that finally and unilaterally defeats the zombies horde once humanity has already fallen.

Fear The Walking Dead airs its final two-part episode this Sunday on AMC. I’m still baffled this season was allowed to air at all.

Who would you like to see survive the series finale? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.