Long live Negan!

This post contains spoilers about season 7 of The Walking Dead

There’s a new kid on the block. He has flashy white teeth, a black leather jacket and a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire called Lucille. He’s always grinning, generally having a good time and has some killer (usually literally) one liners. Okay, he’s a complete sadistic sociopath and psychopath but you know what, I can’t help liking Negan! (Not least because of his rock ‘n’ roll demeanor, something of a cross between Lou Reed and Jamie Hince.)

Understandably, most of Rick's crew don’t like Negan. In the first episode of season 7 he batters Abraham and Glenn to death with Lucille (his baseball bat). The rest of Rick’s group stand around, aghast, yet do nothing. Which is what they do for the first eight episodes, as Negan beats up and kills other members of Alexandria (the community where Rick and co. live), takes half their supplies, and generally force them into a life of servitude (it should be noted – they could leave Alexandria at anytime. They could find a nice boat and sail to the Maldives!) which includes kneeling before Negan and thanking him for slipping his dick down their throats (Negan’s words).

It’s bizarre. In one episode alone, there were about eight of Rick’s posse all looking to kill Negan, whilst all the time he’s relaxing at Alexandria on his own (i.e. without any of his posse), drinking lemonade, eating pasta and shooting some pool, surrounded by about a dozen other people who also want him dead yet seem incapable of doing anything. My theory is if they killed Negan, the rest of the Saviours wouldn’t be too fussed; they're basically all in slavitude too, presumably all hate but fear Negan, and he seems to have one-sided monologues with most of them, belittling and humiliating them at best, threatening and torturing them at worst.

Potential weapons are lying around all the time; okay, guns have been confiscated (but there was ample time before to take him out with anything from a pistol to a rocket launcher), but there’s Lucille (his baseball bat), which Negan gives to Rick and Carl to hold for him, there's a cut-throat razor blade, there's a snooker cue; basically, any one at any time could have killed him. But if that had happened, the season wouldn’t have dragged on for so long...

Even in the later episodes, guns, a tiger (!) and a zombie Sasha can’t kill Negan. Like Rick, he is invincible. After sixteen episodes, Rick says exactly the same words to Negan as he did in the first episode (when he was also tied up and on his knees); “I’m gonna kill you… Not today. Not tomorrow. But I’m gonna kill you”. Understandably, Negan laughs in Rick’s face (but doesn’t kill him).

Nothing really ever works out for Rick. But for Negan life seems a bowl of cherries. He has a harem of wives, undying loyalty and can generally do as he pleases. Before the zombie apocalypse, God knows what he did – barman in a biker bar? Banker? MD of a company?

People’s previous lives and work are rarely mentioned. Post-apocalypse you either sink or swim. After seven seasons, any survivors can kill a zombie as easy as turning the page of a book. No, zombies aren’t the problem at all – it’s other humans.

Season 8 will be broadcast towards the end of the year.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Notes on the Walking Dead
The Walking Dead recipe
Dinosaurs & zombies