Today, we’re looking at creating and writing antagonists by comparing and contrasting the villains of Fear the Walking Dead’s excellent third season with its terrible fourth. New cast members, a new sprawling location, and fresh names in the writers’ room creating gloriously broken and conflicted antagonists transformed FTWD’s third outing into a near-perfect season.
So how did a show, so bad in its freshman and sophomore years, suddenly become must-see TV in its junior year? By creating antagonists who were flawed, nuanced, and relatable. How was all that hard work undone in its senior, fourth season? Well, by not creating and writing antagonists who were broken, conflicted, flawed, nuanced, and relatable.
Unfortunately, I called this quality slump when news came that Morgan (Lennie James) and showrunner Scott Gimple were joining FTWD from The Walking Dead. One could say I feared Fear the Walking Dead would die its death… You went and did it, and Goddamn you all to hell, I was right!
As we approach the final stretch of FTWD4, the final three episodes should mercilessly ramp up towards inescapable inevitability, when antagonists near their dastardly goals. FTWD3 ended with the most spectacular finale to date. FTWD4’s characters are milling around, literally looking for beer and wondering whether they should go back to save some randoms they just met. The nails are already firmly hammered in the coffin.
SEASON THREE: HOW TO CREATE AND WRITE ANTAGONISTS
94% of what made S03 so great was down to the writer’s room creating and writing antagonists who were rich veins of awfulness. The other 8.15% was down to theme and location. Maths never was my strong point. When Madison, Nick, Alicia, Strand et al., arrived at Jeremiah Otto’s utopian Broke Jaw Ranch, it seemed like a welcome sanctuary… until it became a pressure cooker of fear, white supremacy, and insanity waiting to go off.
After FTWD3 started with a bang, the unexpected sound of Travis (Cliff Curtis) spectacularly falling to his death from a helicopter, establishing that no one was safe in S03, we found out that Jeremiah (Deadwood and Sons of Anarchy’s wonderful Dayton Callie) and his fellow brethren had secrets. Lots of secrets. Jeremiah was an alcoholic, racist, militant TEOTWAWKI survivalist and quasi-cult leader who was slowly drinking himself to death due to a King Lear-like madness.
The land that Broke Jaw Ranch and its white supremacist outlaws occupied happened to be land that the local Native Americans want back. The writers created the perfect hotbed for conflict, and including Qaletaqa Walker (Michael Greyeyes) and his nearby Black Hat Reserve people brilliantly set up an overarching theme for the series… plus a feisty, zeitgeisty metaphor in Trump’s America.
You see, when you create and write antagonists in the right way, everything from characters’ decision-making, location, and events fall into place like dominoes in the writers’ room. Hell, create four-corner opposition and your show practically writes itself!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, as Otto spirals out of control, his sons Jake and Troy battle amongst themselves to be The Man Who Would Be King. Jake and Troy are Ben Solo and Kylo Ren in the form of two brothers. Jake is light but called to the dark. Troy is hugely disturbed, conflicted, and power-hungry due to his daddy issues, but called to the light.
Jake is his brother’s keeper; forever reining Troy in as he descends into his very believable, inherited madness. It is Troy’s unpredictable yet understandable actions that drive FTWD3: Jake must keep his brother from making batshit insane decisions that endanger everyone.
Here, Jake and Troy perform the twin roles of opposite moral compasses, pushing and pulling our gang. Jake pulls Madison, Nick, and Alicia one way, Troy the other, but always towards irrevocable, game-changing moral or immoral decisions. Because that’s what great antagonists must do – create situations that make our heroes reveal what they’re made of… to bring out the best or worst of ourselves.
The best antagonists, like Troy or Heath Ledger’s Joker, force protagonists like Madison, Nick, Alicia, and Batman into impossible situations, leaving them no choice but to break their strongly embedded moral codes. In The Dark Knight, Batman hacks into millions of Gothamites' cell phones to catch The Joker. In FTWD3, Madison will kill to protect her family.
WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD?
Your antagonist must want the same goal as the protagonist. Or, at least, a flipped version. So when creating your big bad, they should always be the mirror of the protagonist – i.e., they should be two sides of the same coin, like Batman and The Joker fighting for the soul of Gotham. Self vs Shadow-self. Superego vs Id. If you don’t know your Jungian archetypes, think of your protagonist and antagonist as co-dependent and narcissists; two beautiful, vulnerable bastards screaming for attention, but while one uses honorable, lawful methods to get what they want, the other will go to any immoral lengths; their Machiavellian ends always justifying their means.
Then, in your High Noon town square shootout, flip that conceit on its head, just as Batman breaks his own moral code by turning every cell phone in the city into a microphone to defeat The Joker or young Han Solo learns to shoot Tobias Beckett first (before Tobias can shoot him) in the finalé of Solo: A Star Wars Story. Protagonists don’t beat antagonists by being the nice guy; they beat them by becoming like the antagonist.
By creating and writing antagonists for FTWD3, the writers’ room understood that every act and event was spawned by the believable backstories of hugely interesting, conflicted three-dimensional characters. However unusual, however dangerous their actions, they were driven by believable wants, needs, and motivations. This is the advance planning that led to memorable, meaningful scenes, dripping with pathos and tension.
When creating FTWD3’s antagonists, the writers understood that backstories with deep layers of psychological disorders, addiction, and regret lay down a character’s actions.
The writers also understood that antagonists must be equal in power and have similar goals (but opposite methods) to protagonists. The room knew their mythology too; the brother archetype, so often visited in Biblical, Greek, Norse, and Egyptian myths of three thousand years ago. Hella! If Thor and Loki, Cain and Abel, Castor and Pollux, and Osiris and Set ain’t broke, don’t fix ’em!
SEASON FOUR: HOW NOT TO CREATE AND WRITE ANTAGONISTS
Where did it all go wrong? Well, after the best season in either The Walking Dead's almost decade-long history, the powers that be decided that Fear The Walking Dead’s fourth season needed a dreaded “creative reboot”. A seasoned TWD writer and exec should improve things, right?
Wrong! Heading up the writers’ room, Scott Gimple brought all of TWD's flaws with him. They ditched all the most interesting characters: Jake and Troy were killed off. Nick quickly followed at the start of season four (because actor Frank Dillane wanted to leave), then, in the mid-season finalé, lead protagonist Madison went out in a fiery blaze…or did she? Clue: If we don’t see a character die on-screen, expect to see them again.
To add insult to injury, when Alycia Debnam-Carey should have been elevated to lead actress, as her character (Alicia) is now the most flawed, conflicted, and only original surviving member, she was downgraded to a bit-part support to accommodate a cheap PR stunt; Morgan’s arrival.
After some fair-to-middling 4A episodes featured a new, TWD-esque, forgettable set of big bads, The Vultures at the baseball stadium, and Morgan’s crossing over from TWD by walking from Virginia to Texas, FTWD was forced to leap forward 2-4 years. This unnecessary PR stunt rendered the amazing season three burst dam finalé/cliffhanger pointless.
Season 4 has picked up a few likable characters along the way, notably John Dorie and June, and featured a few exciting episodes, but these are the exceptions to the rule. Bereft of antagonists with realistic motivations (for let me be very clear about this; zombies are not antagonists, they are as much a backdrop as a hurricane), FTWD’s group lacks a clear mission statement... or anything interesting to do, so most episodes became filler.
Motivation problems can always be fixed with Kurt Vonnegut’s advice: “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.”
Morgan endlessly walks roads looking for meaning or changing his mind, then changing it back again. Have I decided to be a pacifist again or not? Am I going back to The Sanctuary? Why am I so boring? After eight seasons of flip-flopping and hesitancy on TWD, who fucking cares?
Splintered and roaming a small stretch of Texas highway, our scattered heroes always seem to be on walkie-talkies chatting to quickly dispatched, needless randoms. There’s no urgency or tension as our new antagonist is finally seen terrorizing our gang. The only problem is, “Filthy Woman” is not a 3D character with a well-crafted backstory from the minds of writers who know their craft, and, as such, she terrorizes no one, never.
I’m sure we’ll get to see the tragic backstory that created her, but, at present, this dreadlocked lady is a series of broad brush strokes – her face caked in mud as she poisons supply boxes left for travelers, she collects zombies and uses them to (somehow silently) attack drifters. Then she writes cryptic messages with a Sharpie on her zombie’s faces…
The reason? “Oh, I dunno – because it will look cool,” offered Scott Gimple (probably), and because she’s gone mad and has decided her raison d’être is to teach Morgan “to be strong again.” That’s despite the fact she’s met him once and spoken to him on a walkie for 90 seconds. In other words, for no other reason than the script desires it.
Filthy Woman's involvement in the machine gun truck cliffhanger was cool, but like everyone in TWD, from one-eyed The Governor to baseball bat-wielding Negan, Filthy Woman is a gimmick. At least The Governor and Negan were scary.
Creating one-dimensional antagonists and not posing a meaningful thematic question has a knock-on effect throughout your whole season. The impressive hurricane scattered everyone in different directions, but instead of pairing characters off in the most interesting, conflicting ways, Strand and John Dorie were inexplicably stranded on a temporary island (created by the aforementioned hurricane). The only way to escape? To build a raft, then row past a crocodile.
Create strong antagonists who challenge your protagonists, and your TV show writes itself. Creating weak, poorly motivated antagonists only leads to a series of bad decisions in the writers’ room. The result? FTWD4 jumped the crocodile just like Fonzie jumped the shark in Happy Days.
Further evidence that the show has lost its way comes when this same episode devoted a ten-minute C-Story to Luciana finding an old dying man a beer. Okay, this chap, “Polar Bear” does eventually tie into the story arc, but this kind of filler will never engage your audience.
When Scott Gimple arrived, the show immediately began using the same completely unnecessary and totally confusing non-linear storytelling approach as TWD to create the illusion of creativity and try to stay ahead of the Redditors. But now the unpalatable truth is clear: Just like the TWD writers' room, the FTWD producers don’t know what they’re doing.
Instead of relying on gimmicks like the Morgan crossover, they should have stuck with the writers who created Otto, Troy, Jake, and Broke Jaw Ranch. Alan Page, Jami O’Brien, Wes Brown, Mike Zunic, Ryan Scott, Mark Richard, Lauren Signorino, and British writer Suzanne Heathcote all expertly steered a ship that’s become as rudderless as John Dorie’s raft.
There are two lessons to be learnt here: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and “Don’t cross the streams”
Fear the Walking Dead will continue to meander aimlessly on AMC, 9 pm Sundays until… Season 9 of The Walking Dead is back on October 7th.