Hang on to your barb-wired bats Walking Dead fans, because our newest villain isn’t going anywhere any time soon. While the fact that Negan (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is sticking around for a while is not exactly news to fans of the The Walking Dead comic books, it may be disconcerting to fans who only watch the show on AMC.
With the season seven opener at the end of October came the loss of two beloved characters and the full-blown introduction of Negan, the biggest threat that Rick Grimes’s group has encountered in the series thus far. The premiere was both emotional and brutal, but it also captured viewers’ attention and had us anxiously anticipating everything that was in store for the season.
Since that episode, however, the tone of The Walking Dead has been a bit … off. With the season divided among multiple storylines and communities – from Alexandria, to the Hilltop, to the Saviors – it seems as though the show has been all over the place the first half of this season, and fans have been become more vocal about their restlessness. The biggest common factor revolving around all of this has been Negan.
We have seen in the last few episodes how Negan and his Saviors are breaking down the morale and hope that Rick and Co., as well as the Alexandrians, once had. It is a bleak and tense world right now in The Walking Dead, and we are watching our favorite characters suffer and try to find new means of survival in ways we haven’t seen before. All because of Negan. Unfortunately, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
In an interview at San Diego Comic Com, Jeffrey Dean Morgan told ComicBook.com he is in it “for the long haul” and while talking to The Howard Stern Show, revealed that he was on board for season 8 of the show.
There are only two episodes left of The Walking Dead before the mid-season finale. While Negan was noticeably absent the last two weeks in “Go Getters” and “Swear”, he will be making big appearances in the final two episodes of 2016.
