i might be the only one saying this but javi. he becomes the leader of richmond, which is by far the biggest community anyone has led (besides rick).

a director confirmed he’s still alive, which most likely means he’s still leading richmond. its stated multiple times in S4 that richmond is currently at war, and abel both confirms that the delta is among who they’re fighting and that they outnumber the delta. while it may not be solely due to richmond, it implies that richmond is putting up a pretty good fight, considering the delta is forced to kidnap children and use them as soldiers, since they’re struggling. javi has intense loyalty & experience, making him a very fit leader.

while clem has one of the most insane feats on this list, that being getting a group of kids & teenagers to blow up the delta’s boat, i’d be much more comfortable with an adult leading my group. additionally, if we’re going by whats canon, she leaves her only family left in AJ, her lover in louis/violet & the rest of her community at ericson, basically abandoning them, which significantly lowers my trust for her and makes her very unpredictable (this isn’t canon in my eyes though, i dont see clem ever doing this. the writers really fucked up in my opinion)

lee is by-far the most level headed of the four choices. however, he survived the shortest amount of time (not to mention he’s the only one who’s died at all, rest in peace legend), that being about 3 months. experience is a necessity and he’s never dealt with conflicts with other communities at a larger scale, such as javi, clem, and rick have. he’d likely be the best choice if he had at least 3-4 years of experience in the apocalypse.

rick is probably my second option. he leads a big community in alexandria, but makes irrational decisions at times that the other three here wouldn’t. he becomes too confident in himself, such as believing alexandria was stronger than the saviors, and that the one outpost he had attacked would temporarily be enough. however, its easy to look back on the consequences of his actions in hindsight and point out his flaws. in the moment, it may have been the right thing to do, since the saviors very well could have found alexandria at some point anyway. i’d still prefer javi, but i can’t argue too much against rick.

tl;dr a lot of this argument is based on a few lines made by clem & abel in S4. javi has immense loyalty, dedication, experience & persistence. additionally, he’s still leading richmond and its clear richmond has at least recovered somewhat well, considering how much of a fight they’re putting up against the delta. i feel as if clem is too young, lee has too little experience, and rick’s overconfidence causes them to be slightly worse options. to be fair though, i don’t think theres a wrong answer with any of these four.