After a surprise return from the dead, Troy’s twist in Fear the Walking Dead’s two-part series finale repeats the spinoff’s worst villain mistake.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead’s series finale

The Fear the Walking Dead series finale revealed Troy Otto’s motivations, repeating the show’s worst villain problem. After Troy’s miraculous return to the spinoff in the back half of the final season, his main focus became revenge on Madison and finding a home for himself and his daughter, Tracy. Not only did he threaten those in Madison’s group, including Charlie, but he also claimed to have killed Alicia. This set him up as the perfect antagonist to carry the show’s final story to its end because it helped other characters, namely Madison and Strand, develop into less cynical survivors.

Troy’s child twist on Fear the Walking Dead was the character’s biggest change since the last time audiences saw him when he incited chaos. Introducing a child into Troy’s story allowed his complexities to tie in with the focus of this season’s narrative. Additionally, giving Troy something bigger than himself to fight for made him a more complex villain and opened the way for his redemption. However, the delay in revealing Troy’s motivations and what they ended up being closely mimicked that of another Fear the Walking Dead antagonist.

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Troy’s Reason For Killing Alicia Calls Back To Fear The Walking Dead’s Worst Villain

Fear the Walking Dead‘s ending saw Troy reveal that he wanted to prevent others from exhibiting charity, the way Alicia did, since it led to his wife Serena dying. His motivations for killing Alicia were the same as Martha’s from the latter half of season 4. Martha’s husband died after a car accident when no one responded to her distress calls. This led to Martha’s illogical mission to kill anyone who helped others or asked for help, positioning her as one of the show’s worst villains.

However, Troy had specific targets instead of making Serena’s death a core element of his outlook on helping others. This was seen when he saved Madison from drowning even after she threatened to kill him and essentially kept him as a prisoner. Using the grief of losing a spouse, Fear the Walking Dead gave Troy a similar final arc as Martha’s overall, which disadvantaged him because it recalled her flimsy motivation and detracted from the weight of Troy’s acts of revenge.

Fear The Walking Dead Ignored The Perfect Explanation For Troy’s Revenge Plan

In Far the Walking Dead season 3, Troy developed a fondness for Madison and Nick, most likely because he didn’t have any nurturing parents and had a different mentality from his brother Jake. Despite how much Troy wanted to be a part of their family after losing his own, Madison bashed him in the head and left him for dead. Rage toward Madison and Alicia, even though they didn’t directly cause Serena’s death, didn’t make much sense and acted as a forced layer to Troy’s story.

Given that Madison had stabbed Troy in the eye with a spoon, orchestrated his father’s death, brutally beat him up, and left him for dead, there was more than enough to justify his season 8 revenge. Adding Tracy to the story was beneficial for the twists surrounding Alicia’s return, but basing Troy’s reasons on off-screen incidents that the Clarks had no idea about mirrored Martha’s vendetta. Fear the Walking Dead missed the chance to build onto existing knowledge about Troy and Madison’s tainted past and repeated a poor villain arc, ultimately weakening Troy’s revenge arc.