This episode is the finale to what will be the penultimate season of the Walking Dead. After the season returned a few weeks ago all of the episodes have been smaller in scale and more character focussed. This has been as a result of filming being affected by the pandemic, but if you were worried this final episode would continue on this path and be a weak finale, you’ll be glad to hear that whilst this is another character focussed episode this feels by far the most worthy addition of this batch.
Negan is the focus of this finale and he is ultimately the character with the most intrigue in the show at the moment. After long serving as the main villain for the show, Negan grew into somewhat of a fan favourite and his ongoing attempts at redemption have been met with understandably mixed results from the other characters who he once terrorised.
Negan has had a long standing relationship of sorts with his trusty baseball bat Lucille, named after his dead wife, and whilst it was buried some time ago, being ousted by Carol leads Negan to dig up the past both physically and metaphorically.
The story skips back in time repeatedly, first twelve years and then more and more showing Negan dealing with the trauma of his wife’s battle wife cancer and his trying to source the medicine to keep her alive in what is still a relatively newly walker filled world.
Negan’s wife Lucille is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s real life wife Hillarie Burton. This must have been a strange dynamic for the pair to go into after all these years, Jeffrey now knowing that Lucille has the face of someone he has years of history with.
It’s fascinating to see Negan at the start of his journey and this exploration of a single character feels more worthy as a story to tell them many of the recent additions. Learning more about how Negan became who he is helps flesh out the character, and adds more tragedy and insight into how a zombie outbreak can change people. A once ordinary person can transform into a gang leader and command an army of followers and this chapter gives a glimpse of how anyone can go down ‘the wrong path’.
It’s great to have the show skip back to pre-zombie apocalypse and see Negan and his wife before the chaos in the world began. This episodes also gives the story of how Negan got both his famous leather jacket (a mid life crisis purchase) and his baseball bat, which it turns out was used to knock out Negan before anyone else.
As the episode starts to skip back forward we saw him dealing with villains who threaten him and he has to make tough decisions to betray good people. This will obviously take a toll on him and influence who Negan becomes. But the biggest contributor is when Negan is able to return to Lucille and finds that she has taken her own life. A combination of drugs and self suffocation. A broken Negan clips barbed wire to add to the baseball bat and then torches the house and walks out, his transformation into who Negan will be in the future now beginning without his wife to help keep him from the dark side.
The episode doesn’t quite end here and we see Negan go full Punisher and take revenge of the thugs that held him captive and prevented him returning to his wife in quick fashion. With his first captive tied up on his knees and a baseball bat in hand this very much plays into Negan’s debut and how he killed Glen all those seasons ago.
The episode eventually reaches back to the present day and Negan gets to use the bat one final time to take out a Walker. In doing this the bat breaks and if Negan was going to return to his darker times it would seem that the breaking out the bat may be the closure he needed to truly let go.
As the episode wraps up Negan returns to the camp and let’s Carol know he’s coming back to stay. With a warning from Carol that Maggie will want to kill him, the show ends with a look between Negan and Maggie and the tease of fireworks to come.
Conclusion
This episode is by far the strongest of the recent Walking Dead episodes as it had a clear purpose and adds a lot to an already well developed character. The ending to tease a show down between Negan and Maggie is also a great choice to end the season on as it’s by far the most interesting dynamic to resolve with the long left unaddressed fact that he killed her husband Glen. But by this stage of the game with Negan now being a regular on team good guy who’s side will you be on for when they do face off?
The next season of the Walking Dead will be the last and will start later this year for an expanded run. For more reviews and news on the Walking Dead check out the Movies/TV section of the site. Also check out the weekly Geek Battle show on the Extreme Improv YouTube channel.
