We're standing on the cusp of The Walking Dead's introduction of the comics' biggest, baddest villain: Negan, the leader of the Saviors. On the show, Daryl, Abraham, and Sasha recently came across this biker gang outside of Alexandra. Yes, Daryl may have blown those particular bikers up with a rocket launcher, but there are still plenty more of them out there, including Negan himself. He will be played on the show by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, hot off his stint as sexy investigator Jason Crouse on The Good Wife. And a Walking Dead comic character doesn't get a reputation as a "bad guy" unless they've killed a few someones, so TWD viewers should be afraid — very afraid — of what Negan's introduction means for our favorite characters. Right about now, those who haven't read Robert Kirkman's source material are probably wondering: Whom does Negan kill in the Walking Dead comics?
(SPOILERS, obviously. Did I really have to tell you that?)
When we first meet Negan in the comic, it's while a group of our heroes are on their way from Alexandria to the Hilltop Colony (aka the residence of Jesus, whom viewers just met in last Sunday's episode). Negan and his lackeys round up the group — which includes Rick, Carl, Glenn, Maggie, Michonne, and Sophia (who's still alive in the comic) — and tells them that he's going to execute one of them at random as retaliation for the Saviors whom they had previously killed. After a tense game of eenie-meenie-miney-mo, Negan picks … Glenn, everyone's favorite pizza delivery boy-turned-hero, and proceeds to beat him to an unrecognizable bloody pulp with his weapon of choice: a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire which he refers to lovingly as "Lucille."
However, there's one small matter that complicates this issue for the show, and that's Glenn's recent brush with death via a fall off a dumpster. Viewers spent several weeks earlier this season wondering whether Glenn was dead — a situation that never arose in the comics. So what was the purpose of that narrative trickery? I see two options. 1) The writers aren't planning on having Negan kill Glenn, so they substituted his comics death with that fake "death" to at least get some of the same sense of shock. Or 2) the writers are still planning on having Negan kill Glenn, so they put in that fake "death" to make the character seem invincible, making his actual death all the more shocking. ("Glenn just almost died. Surely, they're not going to kill him off n–" *crunch* *hysterical sobbing*)
So which is it? Is Glenn going to die or not? Unfortunately, there's simply no way to know until the episode in question airs. However, even if the writers decide to spare Glenn, Negan probably still has to kill someone to establish his threat level. And there's one very popular theory concerning whom Negan might kill instead: Daryl Dixon. One simple thing makes the fan-favorite Southern-fried badass disposable: He's an original creation for the show. Daryl doesn't exist in the comic, which means that the writers are free to do whatever they want with him at any time. And considering he's the one who killed all those Saviors, he may have a big target on his back when our group finally crosses paths with Negan.
Regardless of the outcome of the Glenn/Daryl/Lucille scenario, they aren't likely to be the only fatality caused by Negan. Not only is he directly responsible for the deaths of many anonymous Alexandria residents and even some of his own Saviors, but he has also personally killed a couple of other major characters in the comics. The first is Spencer Monroe, the son of former Alexandria leader Douglas (Deanna on the show), whom Negan guts with a knife after Spencer asks him to kill Rick. Which means that following the deaths of his brother, father, and mother, the last of the Monroes may soon be wiped off the face of the Earth.
And then there's Holly. She doesn't really have a direct counterpart on the show so far, but in the comics, she's a resident of Alexandria and a love interest of Abraham. After she's kidnapped by the Saviors, she's used as a Trojan horse of sorts. Negan brings her back into Alexandria to trade with a bag over her head. But as he hands her off to Denise, it's revealed that Holly is now a zombie (Negan presumably killed her) and she bites Denise, losing Alexandria its only doctor. And of course, Negan is still alive in the comics, so he has plenty of time to add to his prodigious body count.
Will Glenn or Daryl be meeting the business end of Lucille? Or will it be someone else? Will Spencer soon join his family in the afterlife? Will we lose Denise just as we're growing fond of her? We'll find out when Negan is introduced in the Season 6 finale of The Walking Dead.
Images: Gene Page/AMC
