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The violence was over the top, the delivery was awful, and Negan’s ham-fisted introduction sent the entire show into a narrative and ratings tailspin it’s never recovered from.
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We know how that ended: the show closely followed the comics, as it does with most of its weighty choices, by killing off Glenn in brutal fashion, alongside the more inconsequential murder of Abraham. In last year’s season 7 premiere, The Walking Dead delivered perhaps its most jarring and controversial episode, “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be.” Showrunner Scott Gimple had to deliver on the cheap, and still unforgivable, cliffhanger ending of season 6, in which viewers were told to wait half a year to find out who Negan would kill. Let’s see whether The Walking Dead can turn him around. But while we’ve glimpsed the many faces of our main character, Negan has thus far remained hopelessly shallow. We’ve had it bashed into our skulls that Negan symbolizes the dysfunction and depravity of the post-apocalypse, while Rick embodies humanity’s hope. A score of 10 means he’s the best, most complex villain we’ve ever seen a score of 0 means he’s pretty much the same ol’ Negan he’s always been. We’ll look at all the traits a villain is supposed to exemplify and excel at, including those we detest, and boil it down into one single score on what we are calling the Negan - o - meter™. As played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Negan has always been violent, but otherwise, he’s stubbornly remained a comic book thug, never entirely becoming the nuanced character the show so sorely needs.Įach week, I’ll be analyzing the show through its presentation of Negan: how he acts, how he delivers his bad jokes and menacing threats, and most importantly, how his character develops in contrast with our supposedly virtuous heroes. For us here at The Verge - forever critics of big bad guy Negan and his man-baby antics - it’s an opportunity to examine just how effective the show i s at creating a complex villain. The Walking Dead is back, kicking off its eighth season with a bloodier, more political story arc that will likely track the comic’s “All Out War” saga.