The good news about tonight’s episode of The Walking Dead, “Start to Finish,” is that it was a tense, nail-biting episode that kept many of us on the edge of our seats, worried about some of our favorite characters. The bad news is, the lives of most of those characters are still in danger, and The Walking Dead is going to make us wait THREE MONTHS to find out what happens.
We’ll explore many of the open questions remaining at the end of the episode later, but for now, let’s just quickly inspect the post-credits scene above. We finally got our first mention of the much-hyped character Negan, who will be played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan (but who we may not officially meet until near the end of the season). In the post-credit scene of the mid-season finale, “Start to Finish,” Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham run upon some men in motorcycles who stop them and demand their truck, their weapons, their candy, their porn, and even their emergency napkins, stating “Everything now belongs to Negan!”
What does that mean? And who, exactly, is Negan?
Comic Spoilers
Negan is the most vicious villain in Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comic books so far, and he’s also the most successful one, posing an even bigger threat to Rick and his crew than The Governor. Negan is the leader of The Saviors, a group of about 50-70 men who act as something akin to the post-apocalyptic mafia: They provide protection in exchange for payment, in this case, half of what everybody else owns, hence the demand from Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham their truck and weapons.
While the Governor ruled with a certain amount of charm, pretense, a lot of false promises, Negan rules by fear. He carries around a baseball bat covered in barbed wire that he calls “Lucille.” He likes to make his point with new people early on, and as many have heard, he’s responsible for the death of a major character on The Walking Dead. He lines up a group of survivors, picks one at random, and brutally beats him to death with Lucille to demonstrate how serious he is.
It’s a devastating scene.
Those who betray Negan or refuse to give in to his demands are often killed or brutally punished by, for instance, having a hot iron pressed against their face (a fate we’ll almost certainly see with Dwight). Later on in the comics, he also takes an interest in Carl Grimes. Rick and Negan, obviously, are at odds, and the interesting thing is, Negan often gets the better of Rick. In fact, there are some moments when those Alexandrians who do not trust Rick to lead their community consider jumping ship and siding with Negan.
Of course, the particulars will probably be modified as The Walking Dead is translated from comic book to screen, but the post-credits sequence — which is not in the comics — at the very least suggests that Negan will continue to demand supplies from others.
We’ll be hearing a lot more about Negan in the back half of season six, but if the rumors are true, don’t expect to actually see him until the season finale.
Here’s that post-credits scene again if you’d like to relive it…
