The Bachelorette's season 12 hulking villain Chad Johnson eviscerates platters of deli meat and gnaws on whole, raw sweet potatoes. He does pull-ups with suitcases full of protein powder strapped to his weight-belt. He responds to accusations of steroid use by simply saying, "There’s no way I could have brought them with me." And he trashes his fellow contestants for everything: being shorter than him, being sentient, having kids, having a famous brother, and putting a modicum of effort into literally anything.
None of that makes Chad (real name, Brian) the biggest villain in Bachelorette history. Sure, the Bachelor-Bachelorette franchise has seen a lot of assholes (male and female) in its 14-year history. Yet none of them are quite like our man Chad. Out of the gate and well into this week's two-night extravaganza, Chad has been raising a sea of red flags: constantly assuring us he is not a bully but the greatest guy ever; branding all the other guys virgin-losers and coming up with the nastiest personal insults about every one of them; calling JoJo "nagging" to her face; claiming to know exactly what JoJo wants (him); interrupting and disrespecting JoJo; and generally embodying a piece of shit.
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But this week, Chad bounded over a line that even the most terrible reality villains wouldn't dare toe. He is no longer just a garden variety, fame-mongering jerk who makes people feel uncomfortable — he’s a ticking time bomb making everyone on set fear for their safety with his acts of aggression and explicit threats of violence.
This is how he reacted to news of the group pool party with JoJo: "I’d be happier having her not be in a bathing suit, so they couldn’t see her in a bathing suit. I know what she probably looks like, I can see through her dress." Gross. But it's not really fair to take Chad's words out of context. He also shared this tender thought: "I’m going to cut everyone here’s legs off and arms off and there’s going to be torsos and I’m going to throw them in the pool and I’m going to fuck up this entire damn thing."
This week, he threatened multiple guys, tried to "take it outside," and generally espoused his pro-violence ethos. "The day I hit that door, if that had been somebody's head, it would have exploded," he bragged to the camera. (That door-punching incident —which bloodied his knuckles — happened minutes after Chad grabbed Evan by the collar and ripped his shirt.) Yes, Chad's own words are the best way to convey just how seriously fucked up his behavior has consistently been.
Chad explained his communication style as such: "There's a line where you're saying things and I can't get you to shut up. So the only way that I know, and I think that I can get you to shut your mouth, is to hit you in it." It's no wonder his roommate Derek decided to bunk elsewhere, or that the guys requested a security guard in the house. And thank god for those camera guys. "It's so unfortunate that I can't hurt you without getting in trouble right now," he told Alex during their two-on-one date in the boonies, after Alex clued JoJo in to Chad's violent threats. Then Chad told the camera, in possibly the most ironically self-undermining statement ever: "I'm pissed. Alex lied, he told her I threatened people. You know what? Now I got to go fucking find Alex."
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But the moment that truly scared me? When we were jerked out of the insulated Bachelorette bubble and into the real world — without all the cameras and producers and on-set security guards. In a one-sided confrontation with Jordan, Chad threatened to track him down after the show ended. "You think this is a show and you think you're safe for now. One day, this ends. And when this ends, you go home. When you go home, do you think I can't find you? You think I won't go out of my way to come to your house? I'm dead fucking serious."
And we're dead fucking serious when we say we'll be very glad to see this guy go home — but not quite yet, apparently. The producers are of course going to milk their villain for all he's worth, stretching the on-camera train wreck that is Chad into the next episode for one final explosive incident. The worst part? We have to wait two weeks to watch the most dangerous Bachelor we've ever seen walk off camera for good.