In ‘The Walking Dead’ recap, Negan’s victim is finally revealed and Rick succumbs to the new world order…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It was a summer wrought with tension after the writers and producers behind ‘The Walking Dead’ decided to end season six on a cliffhanger rather than reveal Negan’s victim after the barbed-wire wrapped baseball bat swinging maniac cracked a member of Rick Grimes’ survivors yet their identity wasn’t revealed until Sunday night.
Most critics — myself included — panned the decision because Negan’s arrival was an iconic moment that comic book readers had been waiting to see for years and the identity of his victim had already been revealed back in issue No. 100 first released in 2012 (it was Glenn).
Still, as infuriating as the cliffhanger was at the time, the tension leading up to 9pm on Sunday night seemed like ‘The Walking Dead’ made the right choice as everybody was tuned into find out who Negan introduced to his best girl “Lucille”.
There had even been rumors that to up the ante from the original story from Robert Kirkman’s comics that ‘The Walking Dead’ would end up taking more than one person from that lineup. It turns out, the rumors were true.
Negan ultimately bashed Abraham’s brains out as his first victim — the unlucky winner of his “eeny, meeny miny, moe” game, but then things got even bloodier when he decided to punish the survivors even more with the bat coming down on Glenn’s head halfway through the episode.
If the first one wasn’t shocking enough, Negan smashing Glenn to death with his baseball bat — with a collective gasp felt around the world — was everything ‘The Walking Dead’ had promised with that season six cliffhanger and more. As angry as I was watching that finale last season and lamenting all summer long about how ‘The Walking Dead’ had failed the fans by not revealing Negan’s victim, the awe and mind numbing thrill watching the season seven debut unfold was definitely worth the wait.
With that said, let’s recap the season seven debut of ‘The Walking Dead’ titled ‘The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be’…
Take it Like a Champ
The episode actually started with the aftermath of Negan’s brutal beatdown, but for sake of chronology, we’ll start by picking up right where we left off last season.
After spending a whole lot of time setting up a trap for Rick and the survivors, Negan finally sprung his trap and had the whole gang lined up, on their knees, awaiting punishment for daring to cross the new world order. If you forgot — the new world order is this — you will give Negan half your shit and whether you have to beg, borrow or steal to make ends meet, does not matter, but you will obey or you will pay. Thanks to Rick and his people already killing several member’s of Negan’s army known as the Saviors, the time to pay was long overdue.
So after his “random” selection, Negan finally settled with his bat aimed directly at Abraham. The defiant former military man was the only person who kept his back straight as Negan made his proclamation to the ground and thus he was probably going to be the biggest problem going forward. Negan singled him out and brought down the baseball bat with a sickening thud as Abraham’s head started leaking blood.
Despite his head being turned into a moon roof, Abraham wasn’t about to let Negan get the last laugh as he uttered his final words before dying.
“Suck my nuts”
Another swing came down and Abraham’s head caved in as he fell to the ground. Negan wasn’t finished because he continued to rain down shot after shot after shot until Abraham’s head was turned into bloody mush. Now that may have seemed like more than enough to teach the survivors that this was a whole different kind of enemy than they had ever dealt with before, but some of them weren’t quite broken yet.
Seeing Abraham beaten to death didn’t break them — instead it only made some of them angry. That included Daryl, who despite a gunshot in his shoulder, jumped up and punched Negan in the face after killing Abraham. As Negan said a moment later — that was a big no-no.
To get his point across even further, Negan rose to his feet, reared his bat back and this time came swinging down with the full brunt of the barrel landing on Glenn’s head much to the horror of his wife Maggie, who was sitting just a few feet away. The blunt force trauma was so much that Glenn’s eye was literally coming out of head as he looked back at the group and tried to form his final sentence.
“Maggie — I will find you”
At that moment, Negan saw the distraught woman staring back at the boy with his head bashed in and it didn’t take him long to calculate that they were together. Of course that didn’t stop him from finishing Glenn off with another few vicious swings of his bat. Much like Abraham, Glenn was now on the ground, his head torn to pieces and the rest of the survivors were forced to watch every last second of his brutal demise.
Negan felt like his point was proven, but a moment later, Rick spoke up against the leader of the Saviors and the man who just murdered his friends Glenn and Abraham.
“I’m going to kill you. Not today. Not tomorrow. But I’m going to kill you.”
~ Rick
Seeing that defiance and glimmer of revolt in Rick’s eye proved to Negan that he still hadn’t done enough to break the leader of this opposing faction. All along, Negan wasn’t out to punish the people in this group — he wanted to break their will. Killing two of them in such brutal, vicious fashion was supposed to get the job done, but Rick still had vengeance in his eyes.
That forced Negan to go to plan B and this one involved an excursion with Rick and the RV, far away from the rest of the survivors.
Go Get My Axe
Negan’s tactics might be rather sickening, but unlike The Governor, who we met several season ago, this guy isn’t a sociopath hell bent on killing anyone and everyone. Negan is a dictator — a brutal, unrelenting ruler, who wants his subjects to follow him without any chance of an uprising.
Since killing Abraham and Glenn didn’t seem to get the message across, Negan takes Rick into the RV where he gives him the new rules that he has to follow or risk suffering even more consequences.
“You are mine. You’re people back there, they are mine. This (axe) this is mine. Hey, Rick, go get my axe. Let’s be friends.”
~ Negan
Negan tosses the axe that Rick had with him when first being corralled into the set up with the Saviors and tells him to go fetch. Negan then tosses Rick outside into a sea of walkers, who have converged on the RV, and instructs him to get the axe on the roof.
Rick snaps out of the emotional distress and quickly climbs to the roof where he’s only inches away from the axe when the gravity of the situation finally hits him. He replays the moment in his mind — Negan’s bat smashing Abraham and then doing the same to Glenn — and he can’t quite comprehend how things managed to go so wrong. Rick felt like he was on top of the world only a day before and now he’s being told to fetch an axe while being surrounded by a road full of walkers.
Assisted by Negan and some helpful gunfire, Rick eventually gets back to the RV with the axe in hand before the door swings back open. Negan allows him inside where he is handed his axe and he once again lays down the rules. Rick used to be “king shit” but now he’s going to be subservient or his group will pay. Actually, Negan explains that Rick can still be a leader, but he’s going to lead his people to find more supplies to then hand over to the Saviors as part of this new agreement.
Negan hands the axe back over to Rick before driving the RV to the spot where he massacred Abraham and Glenn. This lesson isn’t over just yet.
The Look
Negan tosses Rick back out of the RV and puts him in front of the other survivors and lays out what that trip was all about.
“That trip was about the way that you looked at me. I wanted to change that. I wanted you to understand, but you’re still looking at me the same damn way.”
~ Negan
Negan goes through one final test with Rick and the survivors to see if he can finally break them to his will. He puts guns to the back of everybody’s heads before grabbing Carl out of the line up and bringing him right next to his father. Negan draws a line on Carl’s arm and lays him out flat in front of Rick. He then tells Rick to chop off his own son’s arm or watch everybody in the group get shot at once.
The torment on Rick’s face is undeniable, but Negan gives him until the count of three to get the job done. Carl tells his father to just get it over with and Rick raises the axe, ready to amputate his own son’s arm when Negan finally intervenes.
“You answer to me. You provide for me. You belong to me. Right?”
~ Negan
After answering back, Rick has a look of defeat and disparity in his eyes like we’ve never seen before. And that’s exactly what Negan wanted.
Negan decides to take Daryl with him as collateral and warns Rick that if he tries any of that “not today, not tomorrow’ stuff, that he will send him pieces of the last remaining Dixon brother as punishment. Or even better yet, Negan will bring Daryl to Alexandria and force Rick to cut pieces off him as punishment.
“Welcome to a brand new beginning you sorry shits!”
~ Negan
Before leaving, Negan instructs the group that he will be by in one week for his first shipment of supplies. He drops the axe and leaves Rick and the others with the RV so they can return home together — what’s left of them anyways.
Together
In the aftermath of Negan’s brutal killings, Maggie is the lone survivor still seeking vengeance. Despite her current medical condition and just watching the love of her life being pummeled into oatmeal, she still believes that killing Negan is the only thing that makes sense right now.
She then tells the rest of the survivors to go back without her and she will make it to the Hilltop for medical attention.
Of course, Rick and the others aren’t about to allow that to happen. Sasha volunteers to take Maggie to the Hilltop to visit the doctor while the others pick up Abraham and Glenn’s bodies to be buried back at home. As they carry the bodies out, Rick hears back the ominous words Negan taunted him with in the RV while he was on the roof being told to retrieve the axe.
“Bet you thought you were all going to grow old together, sitting around the table at Sunday dinner in the happily ever after. No, it doesn’t work like that Rick. Not anymore.”
~ Negan
In his final thoughts, Rick imagines that wonderful moment — with his entire family gathered around the dinner table. Glenn at the end with his baby boy sitting on his lap, Abraham seated to his left. It will only ever be a dream because the reality is a nightmare that Negan created and that’s something Rick and the other survivors will never, ever forget.
‘The Walking Dead’ returns next Sunday night at 9pm ET on AMC as we go to ‘The Kingdom’ for the first time. Take a look at the sneak peek below:
