It’s been almost five years since Jeffrey Dean Morgan made his first appearance as Negan on The Walking Dead. Because of all the criticism the early installments received with Negan and the Saviors thereafter, there was always something compelling about Morgan’s portrayal of the character. Even with all the creepy “pants-shit” conversations with which they regularly saddled him, the actor managed to take on the malicious villain and let him penetrate with charisma, charm and threat in equal measure, making it too easy make to understand why he is the kind of person that others will no doubt follow. He was not relatable, but he made sense; the elevated camp elements of Morgan’s performance were part of the character, a way of everything Negan was then, in a sense, a performance. He knew he was presenting a show, and what helped make it magnetic was the fact that the viewer was never quite sure who Negan was among all the smooth bravado.
And now, half a decade later, we’re finally unpacking the backstory of one of the few characters that persists The Walking Dead interesting in its last seasons. ‘Here’s Negan’ makes sense as the final installment of this bonus season’s 10 episodes, not only because it’s the best of the bunch, but also because it effectively discusses the first Maggie – centric episode and brings their history full circle. Maggie has returned to her old life because it may be the only place that feels at home to her. And when she gets there, the man who killed her husband stands there, free and clear. At the end of this hour, Negan returns to Alexandria, not because it is the only place that feels at home, but because there is no such thing as a home; ‘Home’ as a concept ended when Lucille died. What this place represents to him is the fate in my reading of the final look he gives Carol and Maggie. If Maggie kills him in the middle of the night, he’s fine. He deserves it. But he gave the rest of his time on earth to this community, to the idea of fixing it – to the ‘better way’ that Carl insisted he could exist here. Negan likes that idea. Even if it kills him.
But before that, we get the abbreviated history of Negan. It is very different from the Here is Negan comic book miniseries by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard and Cliff Rathburn. Save for Lucille’s cancer, just about everything has been reviewed, from Negan’s relationship with Lucille’s sister to the nespop storyline. It’s still not ideal to throw all the dates in quick succession to the viewer (1 year earlier, six weeks earlier, seven months earlier, et al.), But it works better than in Daryl’s Flashback Episode, largely due to the way everyone builds on the previous one: We’re going from today, bound to Negan, being interrogated by some motorcyclists and telling them his story of the doctor and his daughter and getting the medicine to get his wife’s continue chemotherapy. From there we jump to his meeting with the doctor, where he tells the story of Lucille’s treatment six weeks earlier. Husband and wife survived at home in a deserted city while battling her cancer. But when the force disappears, destroying their remaining supply of medicine, he prepares to seek help – that’s when she puts Negan down, and we get another story within a story, this time from Lucille’s point of view, and learn of Negan’s relationship at the same time with her diagnosis. From there it is a backup, through every level of the narrative, stories are retracted into stories until we are back today.
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For a dizzying pace we get, it works remarkably well, largely thanks to the actions of Morgan and his partner, Burton. Adoctors playing couples with their real other can be a real hit-or-miss affair, but here it’s a bait, with a gripping and built-in relationship where easy chemistry is a great way to get some more to sell improbable things. (like Lucille’s sudden choice to set aside the fact her husband sleeps with her sister). The moments of liveliness are just as strong as the more painful ones, and while I think there was some absurdity to the ‘You Are So Beautiful’ needle drop after Lucille turned into a bed-bound zombie, brushed her teeth at Negan, it was also quite powerful before and after, which determined the intensity of their bond and the way she killed him left him without a bond to the world, capable of … well, almost anything, as he admits to the motorcyclists who bound him earlier. When you kill men for the first time in his life, you see the faint distant look in his eyes as Negan realize there are no consequences, no worldly structure to judge. There’s just his internal voice of sympathy, one he thought died with Lucille.
But while his bat is half brand new after digging it up, he realizes not only the foolishness of investing the spirit of his dead wife in the lifeless object, but also the falsehood. to think of his aforesaid compassion died with her. The reason he is going to find the bat in the first place is not to somehow make peace with things, because it’s just an acceptance that his sadness will always be with him. “You are nothing without her,” he says of his vision of the old, cruel Negan, and it is true – just not necessarily as old Negan might have thought. The bat, which is thrown into the fire, is the symbolic to compare with the fact that cheating married to Negan, sadistic Savior Negan and penitent contemporary Negan are not different men; these are mannerisms that all disappear into the background of his memory of who he was with Lucille during the last months. His old self was worried about getting used to walkers, but the current Negan realized the hard truth: that you can get used to everything.
Anything, that is, except the loss of the person you held based on this world. ‘Here’s Negan’ is ultimately a story of loss and regret, and how those emotions can turn us around in violent or human ways, but only the side of the same coin of our inability to reckon with. tragedy. Rick, Carl and the best of our group have always turned these feelings of loss into determination to prevent such loss for others – found meaning in surrendering themselves to serving as a bulwark against the pain for those around them. Negan, with his wry, accepted smile towards Maggie, found a similar meaning, but without any accompanying sense of self-preservation. “The bad news is that this time too I have some stuff to get off my chest,” he told the cyclist before pushing his head in. But now he got everything off his chest. There is nothing left to hold on to. There is only fate.
Stray observations
- That leather jacket cost $ 600? Jesus, if I were Lucille, I’d be mad about the bill even though my husband was still working as a gym teacher.
- Lucille was a fan of James Bond movies.
- I point my hat at the move of To introduce Negan’s ultimate lieutenant as the daughter of the doctor, thus connecting some points between the beginning of his new life and the rise of the Saviors.
- There are a few monologues in this episode, but for my money it was best that Negan told the cyclist about the fight with the man who did not want Lucille to listen to her song in the jukebox.
- Carol: ‘I did not want your death to be on my conscience. And now it is not. ”
- Another nice touch: to show how there was a glimpse of the future vicious Negan in him during normal times, which was only channeled to play video games online.
- Thank you, everyone, for watching and discussing 10 episodes with me this bonus season. I’ll see you here again later this year for the beginning of the end.