Stranger (Video Game)

"You're a monster. You're a murderer and a thief, and I'm going to hurt you so bad."

- Stranger commenting on Lee.

The Stranger is the main antagonist and an original character in Telltale Games' The Walking Dead: Season One.

Personality
Very little is known about the Stranger; even his name is a mystery. He is a psychotic but calm and calculative man, driven by revenge against Lee's group for stealing his station wagon, and his fixation on taking Clementine to be raised as his surrogate daughter. According to him, he had his life in very good check before the outbreak, and it's deterioration caused him some kind of mental instability, to the point of stalking Lee and his group, keeping tabs on them with Clementine's radio and eventually kidnapping Clementine.

Pre-Apocalypse
The only things known about the Stranger's life before the outbreak is what he tells Lee, though it can be assumed that he lived in or around Savannah, Georgia. He says he coached little league, and while none of his characteristics are explicitly stated, his evident resourcefulness and intelligence made him able to support his family and himself for at least a few months during the zombie apocalypse. That is until he lost his son Adam while hunting, and after Lee's group stole his station wagon when he and his wife Tess and Elizabeth went searching for him, Tess took their daughter and left him. A day later, he found their bodies in the road.

"A New Day"
He does not appear in this episode. However, his station wagon can be seen driving down the highway while Lee is being transported in the police car, presumably being driven by him or his wife.

"Starved For Help"
He does not appear in this episode. However, he was the owner of the station wagon that was looted by Lee's group at the end of the episode. It is assumed he and his family had left the car momentarily while hunting for food in the forest.

"Long Road Ahead"
While Clementine is resting next to Lee and Kenny inside the driver's cabin of the train, he attempts to contact her. He says that he is excited that she is coming to Savannah, and informs her that he has her parents, Ed and Diana. He also says to go see him, no matter what Lee says. Lee and Kenny wonder who he is, as they pull into Savannah.

"Around Every Corner"
At the start of the episode, Lee holds the walkie-talkie, so Clementine won't contact him. After a church bell goes off, the stranger contacts the group and tells them, in a very threatening tone, to get off the street for their own safety (as he wants to keep Clementine safe and keep the rest of the group alive long enough for him to exact his revenge). Lee can ask who he is, but the man doesn't respond.

While Lee is at the house, a man spies on him through the gate while he is burying Fivel (a young child who died of starvation inside his house). Lee sees him but fails to get a good look of the man due to the thick fog. The stranger flees as Lee yells at him. The group then wonder if this was the man who was talking to them on the walkie-talkie.

At the end of the episode, he convinces Clementine to meet him outside the mansion so that she can go with him to see her parents at the Marsh House. While she agrees to go with, he soon reveals his true nature and holds her captive within the Marsh House and contacts Lee once again to implement the next phase of his plan; luring Lee and his group into disaster. Lee suspects that Vernon was the one who took Clementine, as he had previously stated that she would be better off with his people.

However, when Lee and any survivors he might have convinced to go with him arrive at the hideout of Vernon's group, he and the others are nowhere to be seen. The unknown man contacts him via the walkie-talkie. Lee, still assuming that he is Vernon, demands he reveal himself, but the man denies that he is Vernon, and tells Lee to watch his tone. He says Clementine is safe and sound, and that Lee should choose his next words very carefully.

"No Time Left"
Following the ending of the previous episode, a quick dialogue occurs between Lee and the man on the radio. He assures Lee that Clementine is safe and the only thing he wants is Lee to stop hurting other people, challenging Lee to find Clementine if he truly cares for her. Presuming that the kidnapper and Clementine are in the Marsh House, Lee and the group decide to head that way. After arriving at the hotel, Lee notices the abandoned car from "Starved For Help" parked in the street. Lee discovers the room where Clementine is, but is held at gunpoint by the Stranger, who finally reveals himself.

The Stranger orders Lee to give up his weapons and sit down. He then reveals that he was the owner of the abandoned car that was looted for supplies by Lee's group in "Starved For Help". If Lee refused to steal the supplies from the car, Lee is given the option to explain that he was against the group's decision. However, the Stranger tells Lee that he didn't want to harm Clementine as she was either one of two or the only one to not take anything from the car, and only wanted to kill everyone else.

However, upon hearing all about the dangerous and life-threatening situations she was put through, he became convinced that he could take better care of her. The Stranger goes on to explain his earlier life in which he took his son to hunt in the forest, but he lost him in the wilderness. He and his wife searched the forest multiple times to look for their lost son, but were unable to find him.

The Stranger and his family decided to go back to their car only just to discover that their supplies were stolen by Lee's group. This caused a chain of events in which his wife took their daughter and left him after days of starvation and anger. The Stranger found their reanimated corpses on the road the following day. The Stranger was able to sync his radio with Clementines' while surveying the radio frequencies. He learned that she was looking for her parents in Savannah and that her group were responsible for stealing the supplies from his car.

After losing his last bits of humanity and sanity, the Stranger became hungry for blood and vengeance, using Clem to get the information he needed to get his revenge on Lee and his group. Over the next several weeks, the man stalked and watched the group carefully, all the while using the information Clementine supplied him with, including their plan to head to Savannah, to carefully plan out his revenge on the group. When the group left the motel in wake of the bandit attack to make their way to Savannah, the Stranger drives to Savannah as well to arrive at the city before the group does to plan his next move.

He then came up with the scheme to abduct Clementine to make Lee feel his own pain and lure him and his group into a death trap, but had to wait for the perfect moment to present itself to make it quick and quiet. To entice her to separate from Lee, he tells Clem that he has her parents with him in Savannah, knowing that they were likely dead, and she should meet up with him once she arrives. Taking control of the Marsh House and establishing it as his main base within the ruined city of Savannah, the Stranger continued to keep tabs over Lee.

He finally took Clementine to lure Lee and his group into disaster in hopes of finally killing them and having Clem as his new daughter. After explaining his exploits for revenge, the Stranger accuses Lee of all the bad things he has done, based on all the choices he has made until this point of the game, all the while trying to convince Lee that he himself is not a bad man, but a broken father who lost everything to live for except for revenge. Regardless of what choice Lee made, the Stranger will always find fault with his actions and guardianship over Clementine.

The Stranger states his intentions to brutally torture and murder Lee and then take Clementine with him to be raised as his own daughter, believing that this would both satisfy his lust for revenge against Lee and provide him with a good substitute for his family. He then begins to taunt Lee with how little he actually knows about Clementine and what a horrible guardian he has been, bragging about his connection to Clem and occasionally talking down to something within a bowling ball bag laying in front of him on the floor, referring to it as, "Tess".

In this moment of distraction, Clementine is able to escape the closet she was locked in and uses an object on a counter to strike the Stranger (if Lee points at the bottle, kettle or the lamp, she will hit him in the head, if Lee points at the meat cleaver, she will chop him in the shoulder). During the distraction, Lee is able to disarm the Stranger and they start brawling through the room. Lee can either choke the Stranger to death or let him live.

If Lee lets him live, he will try to choke Lee instead, and will get shot in the head by Clementine, who picked up his gun from the floor. If Lee choked him to death, he is given the option to shoot him in the head to prevent reanimation or just abandon his corpse there. Regardless of the outcome, he dies a broken man who lost everything and allowed his lust for vengeance consume his humanity. It is later revealed that the object inside the bowling ball bag was actually his wife's reanimated head.

Killed By
While fighting with the Stranger, Lee is given the option to choke him to death or let him live. If Lee chokes him to death, he is given a new option to either shoot him to prevent reanimation or not. Even if he is not shot, Lee and Clementine leave the room before he reanimates.
 * Lee Everett (Determinant)
 * Clementine (Determinant)

If Lee doesn't choke him, the Stranger starts to choke Lee, but Clementine shoots him in the head.

Killed Victims
This list shows the victims Stranger has killed:
 * Lee Everett (Caused)
 * Numerous counts of zombies.

Lee Everett
"You're a monster. You're a murderer and a thief and I'm going to hurt you so bad.'''"

- The Stranger's words to Lee about his past actions.

The outward relationship between the Stranger and Lee Everett is determined by Lee's decision in "Starved For Help", of whether or not to partake in stealing the station wagon. If he does, he will openly despise Lee, as he does with everyone else in the group unconditionally. If you chose not to, he will act more sympathetic, stating, "After I found Clementine on my radio, I wasn't even mad at you. I was coming for the others, for revenge." Regardless, the Stranger will still find fault with Lee for other reasons, primarily for putting Clementine in so much danger. The Stranger will also criticize your choices throughout the game, including: Lee keeping his past from Clementine, saving Carley or Doug, whether or not he chose to go to the St. John's Dairy Farm, killing the St. John brothers, failing to stop Clementine from eating human meat, stealing supplies from his station wagon, leaving Lilly behind, taking Clementine to Crawford, or dropping Ben Paul to his death.

After conversing for a while, the Stranger ensures Lee he will take care of Clementine, and Lee may even consider letting her stay with him, but soon sees that the man is utterly insane and needs to be stopped after he starts talking to the something in his bowling bag: the decapitated, reanimated head of his wife, Tess. Working together, Lee and Clementine are able to defeat the Stranger and finally reunite. If Lee himself fails to kill the Stranger, Clementine will shoot him in the head.

The Stranger's hatred for Lee, even if Lee did nothing to indirectly hurt him or his family, seems primarily indicative of his hatred for himself. The Stranger is clearly guilt stricken over losing his only son, and eventually his wife and daughter, which proved he was incapable of managing his family in the crisis. It seems that through insulting, degrading and torturing Lee verbally and through Clementine's abduction, the Stranger is achieving his own needs to gratify himself and ease his self-loathing, making Lee little more than his victim.

Even if Lee was by no means a bad person and the Stranger's own mistakes and actions mirror some of the actions he begrudged Lee for, he will continue to address himself as a far better man and father figure for Clementine, further implicating the man's psychotic nature and objective of alleviating his sorrow through defeating Lee.

Mutually, Lee, while sympathetic towards his misfortune and descent into insanity, hates the Stranger for kidnapping Clementine and essentially destroying his group and life, and is also willing to kill to protect Clementine.

Clementine
"I know how to be a dad, you know. She wouldn't be exposed to what she has been with you."

- The Stranger to Lee about keeping Clementine.

The Stranger talked to Clementine on the radio for weeks leading up to his kidnapping of her, and led her to believe that he was a genuinely kindhearted person. In his delusional state, the Stranger thought he actually cared for and loved Clementine, due to her being the only one, other than Lilly and possibly Lee, to disapprove of raiding his station wagon (saying he wanted to "save her" from Lee and his group), as well as seeing her as a potential replacement for his the daughter he failed to protect, Elizabeth. The Stranger's affection for Clementine seems like little more than an extension of his own desires to torture Lee and kill everyone in his group, making it very questionable if he ever truly wanted to care for her, and implying that he simply used her solely to help mend his guilt for getting his family killed, eventually going as far as to lock her in a dark room and use her as bait for Lee.

Regardless, the Stranger clearly frightened Clementine when he abducted her and began to threaten Lee through his radio. Due to these circumstances, along with the Stranger lying about knowing the whereabouts of her parents, Clementine did not return the favor and appeared to actively dislike and attack him, despite initially believing and wanting to convince Lee that he may have been trustworthy. If Lee fails to kill the Stranger himself, Clementine will ultimately choose Lee over him, and shoot him in the head.

Tess
"I hurt her...so bad."

- The Stranger about Tess.

The Stranger and Tess were married and loved each other, however, the apocalypse took a toll on their relationship, causing their love for each other to become strained. When their son, Adam, went missing, and Lee Everett's group stumbled upon their station wagon and stole their supplies, Tess took their daughter, Elizabeth, and left her husband. He went looking for them later on and found them dead in the road. The Stranger was extremely depressed upon the death of his wife, whom he loved. The Stranger then decapitated Tess, and put her head in a bowling bag to remember her. He also took it upon himself to get revenge for his fallen family members, and, he succeeded, to an extent.

Adam
"I took my son, Adam, hunting even though my wife said he was too young. I figured he had to learn."

- Stranger to Lee.

Adam is the Stranger's son, and he seems to have loved him dearly. However, their relationship is not well explored upon because Adam was lost and presumably killed in the woods. The Stranger and his family spent a lot of time to search for Adam, but they never found him. This caused the stranger to become depressed and extremely remorseful for bringing him out into the woods.

Elizabeth
"...She's not Lizzy, but she's sweet, she wouldn't hurt a fly..."

- Stranger to Tess just before being attacked by Clementine.

Elizabeth was the Stranger's daughter and it is implied that he loved her very much. However, their relationship is not well explored because she left with her mother and was killed by walkers the next day. The Stranger was extremely depressed upon the death of his daughter, and then swore revenge on Lee's group for causing the deaths of his wife and daughter, and succeeded to a certain extent. In his insanity however, he didn't necessarily have a problem with replacing his daughter with Clementine.

Trivia

 * The Stranger's real name is never revealed, despite him being a major character.
 * The Stranger is one of two characters Anthony Lam has voiced, the other being Vince.
 * In the beginning of "Long Road Ahead", Clementine is seen talking into her walkie-talkie, most likely to him, as Lee and Kenny return from their trip to the drug store.
 * It was his station wagon that Lee's group had found at the end of "Starved For Help" and had taken supplies. When he found Clementine through the walkie-talkie, he began to plot his revenge.
 * During his speech about who he is, he references every enemy that Lee encounters in his journey: "Yeah. I'm not some cannibal (the St. Johns), Lee. Some killer out in the woods (the bandits). Some...v-villain (Crawford or C. Oberson). I'm....just a...dad. I coach little league."