Season 10, Episode 22, “Here’s Negan”

It’s been almost exactly five years until the day Jeffrey Dean Morgan made his first appearance as Negan a The walking Dead. Despite all the criticism that those first episodes with Negan and the Saviors received later, there was always something compelling in Morgan’s portrayal of the character. Even with all the “pants shit” talks they regularly harassed him with, the actor managed to grab the evil villain and impregnate him with charisma, charm and menace to the same extent, making it too easy to understand by what kind of person would the others follow without a doubt. It couldn’t be related, but it made sense; the intensified elements of Morgan’s performance camp were part of the character, a way of intelligently representing the fact that all Negan did at the time was, in a sense, a performance. He knew he was doing a show and what helped him make it magnetic was the fact that the viewer was never entirely sure who Negan was under all that slippery bravery.

And now, half a decade later, we will finally unpack the background story of one of the few characters he still retains. The walking Dead interesting in his last seasons. “Here’s Negan” makes sense as the final installment of these bonus season 10 episodes, not only because it’s the best in the group, but because it effectively supports the first Maggie-centered episode, which makes a full circle. Maggie she went back to her old life because it is perhaps the only place left for her as a home. And when she arrives, the man who murdered her husband is right there, free and clear. Negan returns to Alexandria at the end of this hour not because it is the only place that feels like home, but because there is nothing like home; “House” as a concept ended when Lucille died. What this place represents for him, in my reading of this final look he gives to both Carol and Maggie, is destiny. If Maggie kills him in the middle of the night, well, she’s fine with that. He deserves it. But he has given what is left of his time on earth to this community, to the idea of ​​repairing it, to the “best way” Carl insisted could exist here. Negan likes this idea. Although they kill him.

Before, however, we get the condensed story of Negan. It is very different from the Here is Negan comic book miniseries by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard and Cliff Rathburn. With the exception of Lucille’s cancer, almost everything else has been reviewed, from Negan’s affair with Lucille’s sister to the story of the nesting dolls. It’s still not ideal to keep throwing all these dates at the viewer quickly (1 year before, six weeks before, seven months before, etc.), but it works better than it did at Daryl’s flashback episode, largely thanks to the way each is based on the above: we go from the present to Negan tied, being questioned by a couple of cyclists, telling them their story of finding the doctor and his daughter and get medicine. to continue his wife’s chemotherapy. From there, we jump to her meeting with this doctor, where she tells the story of Lucille’s treatment six weeks earlier, husband and wife surviving at home in an abandoned city while battling her cancer. But when the power goes out, ruining the remaining supply of medicine, he prepares to ask for help, which is when she sits in Negan and we get another story within a story, this time from Lucille’s point of view, learning from Negan’s affair at the same time as his diagnosis. From there, it is backed up, through each level of the narrative, and the stories are retrieved from the stories until we are back in the present.

For a pace as dizzying as we get, it works really well, especially thanks to the performances of Morgan and his real-life spouse, Burton. Adoctors playing in pairs with their real significant other may be a real affair, but here are the aces, with a poignant and lived-in relationship in which easy chemistry helps sell some of the most unlikely things (like that of Lucille abrupt option to set aside the fact that her husband sleeps with her sister). The moments of gravity are as strong as the most painful, and while I believe there was a certain absurdity in the fall of the needle “You are so beautiful” after Lucille has become a bed zombie, tying her teeth to Negan, she was also quite powerful before and after, setting the intensity of her link and his way death left him unbound in the world, capable of … well, almost anything, as he acknowledges to the cyclists who bound him before. Killing some men for the first time in his life, you see the look slightly away from his eyes as Negan he realizes that there are no consequences, nor is there a worldly structure to judge. There is only his inner voice of compassion, which he believed died with Lucille.

But when the bat splits in half after digging it out, he realizes not only the madness of investing the spirit of his dead wife into the inanimate object, but the falsity. of thinking his mentioned compassion had died with her. The reason you will find the bat in the first place is not to make peace with things, as they are an acceptance that your pain will always be with him. “You’re nothing of her,” his vision of the cruel old Negan tells her, and it’s true, not necessarily the way old Negan might think. The bat, thrown into the fire, is the symbolic one come to an agreement with the fact that cheating married to Negan, the sadist Salvador Negan, and the present-day penitent Negan are no different men; they are transit stations that all disappear into the depths of his memory of who was with Lucille during these last months. His old self was worried about getting used to killing walkers, but the current Negan has realized the harsh truth: that you can get used to anything.

Anything, that is, except the loss of the person who kept you connected to this world. “Here’s Negan” is ultimately a story of loss and grief and how these emotions can make us spin violently or humanely, simply with the reverse of the very coin of our inability to count. tragedy. Rick, Carl, and the best in our group have always turned those feelings of loss into determination to avoid that loss for others; they have found the sense to dedicate themselves to serving as a bulwark against this pain for those around them. Negan, with his ironic, accepting smile at Maggie, has found a similar meaning, but without any sense of personal preservation. “The bad news is that this time I have a few things to get out of my chest,” he told the biker before sticking his head out. But now he has it all in his chest. There is nothing more to cling to. There is only destiny.

Straand observations

• Did that leather jacket cost $ 600? Jesus, if I were Lucille, I would be angry at this bill even if my husband was still working as a gym teacher.
• Lucille was a fan of James Bond movies.
• I tilt my hat towards the move introducing Negan’s eventual lieutenant as the doctor’s daughter, 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 for Negan to tell the biker that he would fight the guy who wouldn’t let Lucille listen to his song on the music album.
• Carol: “I didn’t want your death to be in my consciousness. And now it’s not. ”
• Another nice touch: show how there were visions of the future evil Negan inside him during normal times, just channeled to playing online video games.
• Thanks to everyone for joining me to watch and discuss these extra episodes of season 10. See you here later this year to start the finale.