In a short time, the Filthy Woman has made a nameless name for herself on Fear the Walking Dead as a villain we’re unlikely to forget.
What would happen if The Walking Dead‘s Michonne lost her humanity? Had Lizzie survived, what kind of person would she have grown up to be? What if Celia’s beliefs had spread before Fear the Walking Dead answers these questions with its season 4 villain, the Filthy Woman.
Like Michonne, the Filthy Woman travels with a walker on a leash. But while Michonne used the walkers for defence, the Filthy Woman uses them for offence. Then there’s Lizzie who felt walkers were her friends. If she had lived long enough, it’s possible she could have developed the Filthy Woman’s mentality of the infected being better than us.
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From what we’ve seen of the Filthy Woman, she believes in a superior race. Perhaps she aims to see the end of humanity in place of a walker uprising. As it stands, we’ve seen her kill one (probably two, poor Purvis) ‘weak’ humans, turning them into infected to serve a greater purpose, rendering them not weak anymore. She should succeed, her end game would mean no living humans left. What would the point of that be? Then again, maybe ‘a point’ doesn’t matter. Executive producer Andrew Chambliss comments that the Filthy Woman is ‘broken,’ in which case finding reason in her ambition is pointless.
It’s also possible her goal is not about the rise of walkers, it’s about creating a superior human race by eliminating only the weak humans. She’s taking on a Darwinist natural selection mentality that only strong humans should survive in this world. In a way, she’s doing viewers of Fear the Walking Dead a favor. We don’t want to see morons inhabit the show either. They make infuriating, stupid mistakes that make watching unenjoyable.
However, instead of letting natural selection run its course, the Filthy Woman has put fate in her own hands. She’s purposely sabotaging people, and deciding for herself who’s worthy of living. It’s not natural selection, it’s the Filthy Woman’s selection. She’s contaminated water meant for people in need because strong people shouldn’t ‘need help,’ and she’s sicced her walker pets on at least one person because she deemed him weak.
Unlike so many other villains on The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, the Filthy Woman isn’t coming out guns blazing. It doesn’t appear her intent is to annihilate communities, given that she doesn’t actually have any rivals to compete with. In a strange way, her motivations are much purer. The world has fallen apart, and this is an opportunity to rebuild humanity in its best form.
No matter how you slice it though, killing ‘weak’ people and leaving the strong is a primitive mindset, and is still murder, world turned upside down or not. The difference is that this woman’s cracked ideology can go relatively unchecked in this new world. She’s a lone ranger, with the ability and know-how to cause destruction on a large scale. It’ll be interesting to see how and when Morgan and co will discover the Filthy Woman’s ploys, and who we might lose in the process.