The true Negan finally arrives.
What They Say:
The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be – In the seventh-season premiere, Negan’s actions will haunt the surviving members of Rick’s group forever.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With a lot of outcry at how the previous season ended with Negan swinging at an unknown mark, well, I laughed and loved it because I knew how much it would frustrate and piss off other viewers. I also made sure to essentially avoid a lot of the marketing for the season as it got underway since skipping commercials is so easy these days, which kept the frustration level low for me. But here we are, back at season seven with season eight already announced as coming, and it’s time to dig into who Negan would kill. There’s a lot of ways it could go to be sure because it comes down to whether it would really have an impact or not. Sure, you can get rid of second tier players like Abraham or something, but you know Rick wouldn’t be whacked. Could it be the end of Daryl and cause a riot? Ah, the joys of uncertainty and the realization of one’s level of investment.
The cold open is a painful one as it draws it out so well from where we left off with the blood splattered Rick making his claim that he will kill Negan at some point for what he’s done, all while we have no clue. The face-off between the two is tense and engaging, especially when the hatchet ends up in Negan’s hands, and you have that knowledge from the comics of what could potentially happen. Avoiding the truth as they do for as long as they do is rough as hell, especially with the bloody mess that we see that offers no hint or clue as Negan drags Rick to the camper to have a talk with him. I can so easily imagine so many people frustrated and screaming at their TVs with how it plays out and I just find that absolutely delicious.
Negan’s laying out of his power and dominance is pretty straightforward here as he does it with a smile and a touch of humor, the right kind of sociopathic personality to make it work in the way that you’d expect. There’s definitely an intensity to it with what he does that’s reminiscent of the Governor but with a greater clarity to it, a greater understanding of the world at hand and his place in it with what it takes to survive. And he uses that to hold it over Rick to a great degree here in order to make clear to him that he’s really under Negan’s control. Seeing how it all comes around here to one of the places they ran into as the barricade reinforces that in just how much of a game Negan was playing and doing that with all the images flashing through his head of the group as a whole, leaving us wondering who died as we get them in color just before the incident and then a flashback to their stories in quick form in black and white, it’s just wonderfully done.
That said, having it be Abraham really isn’t a surprise as the character was gone for a while in the comics and his arc had mostly rounded out. It’s not something that’s going to go well for anyone as they react to it in the larger sense, and Sasha in particular is really going to take it hard after losing Bob, but there’s something to be said for how well everyone holds it together while Negan turns him into an absolutely bloody mess, leaving nothing but a headless body with brains splattered everywhere. Negan’s cruelty comes through loud and clear here but you can see how there’s going to be some real resolve in everyone’s eyes in the long term, though you can imagine that there are some that will break and not be able to follow through on any sort of getting even. It’s a brutal sequence but the real cruelty will truly come in how things shift from here.
What moves us past the safe zone is that Negan takes it a step further and after going through some roundabout with Daryl, by beating in Glen’s head as well. Glen doesn’t go down quick or easy and it’s more brutal in a way than what happened to Abraham as he ends up dented in the head first, gets out last words to Maggie, and it’s just horrific with how it’s presented. Which is what The Walking Dead really needed at this point to move beyond what it was and showcase the brutality of how Negan will operate. And that Rick, having gone around the bend before, is going to have to become something else in order to survive this and deal with it for his own well being and for the rest of them as well. With Glenn down, there’s only a handful left from the first season at this stage and his death is particularly rough considering what he survived in the previous season, which just makes it seem even crueler at this point to put him through it as well as Maggie, never mind the rest of them.
At least everyone gets a knock upside the head from the bat just for the point to be reinforced.
Negan’s push to make it clear just how much he’s in control is taken to another level when they get back to the group and Rick is still pretty much looking at Negan like he did at the start. While Rick has been beaten down and taken the losses that he has, Negan knows that Rick hasn’t been broken yet and he intends to do just that. When Negan pulls Carl into everything in a more personal way and draws a line across his forearm, this is when you see Rick entering the pleading phase and truly beginning to panic. So, when Negan tells Rick to cut Carl’s arm off or else he’ll kill everyone else, including those in Alexandria, there’s just such a deep seated fear spreading out that even Michonne makes it clear she understands. Rick’s been pushed all over the place since the series started and this is definitely one of the most difficult things he’s had to face. Even his pleading for it to be him feels earned and honest at this point, which again has me fearful that he’d lose his hand. Rick’s forced into some real shit here and it’s just brutally played out, especially with how Carl tells him to just do it.
Rick being broken here as he is plays out beautifully in the twisted way that finally, finally, gives The Walking Dead a villain that truly fits within this world. I’ve enjoyed the previous villains for what they offered but Negan simply takes it to a whole other level and changes the dynamic of how the show is going to work going forward for a while. There are other areas that will be explored, new characters coming in, but it’s all going to be under the rulership of Negan and the knowledge that most of those that have survived this experience have been broken. Some will be irrevocably broken at that.
In Summary:
That was brutal as fuck. It’s that simple.
Grade: B+
