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Is Negan From ‘The Walking Dead’ Losing His Impact Already? [Spoilers]

By David Cornell
Published on: 07:57 PST, Nov 16, 2016

It appears that Negan from The Walking Dead might already be losing his touch. It might not be due to his presence in the series as an almost likable bully character, but rather due to the show-runners appearing to use the same trick over and over.

The problem with doing the same thing over and over is that after a while, someone is going to get tired of it. It might work with cartoons like the original Scooby-Doo and Warner Bros.’ adventures of Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, but those shows were aimed at children anyway. Children don’t often pay attention to the repetitive nature of what they watch.

In some cases, such as The Big Bang Theory, fans grew to like the show because it was about four nerds who had no clue about women. Now two of them are married, and one is living with his girlfriend. The show changed the dynamic of the characters, and the fans grew less and less interested.

However, with The Walking Dead, there is only one constant. It will always be about people and the messed up things they would do to survive when surrounded by the zombie apocalypse. However, the characters have evolved with time. Daryl (Norman Reedus) went from living in Merle’s (Michael Rooker) shadow to being the soft-spoken heart of the show. Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) went from suddenly becoming an ex-cop to leading a group of survivors and making mistakes which have given him character. Michonne (Danai Gurira) went from being a wandering warrior to a mother figure to Carl (Chandler Riggs) and a lover to Rick.

Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) hasn’t had many episodes under his proverbial belt, having only been in six so far. His first appearance was practically a background cameo in season 6, and he made his major character debut at the end. He came out strong and literally swinging, but now it seems his character isn’t going anywhere.

Negan made it clear in the Walking Dead season 7 premiere that he isn’t one to be stood up to as he took out Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) and Glenn (Steven Yeun) for the actions of others in Rick’s group. He also took Daryl as his personal prisoner and delighted in making him a punching bag (to the sound of “Easy Street,” proving that even the show-runners are having fun messing with us).

Now, we come to the fourth episode of season 7, which Gizmodo says shouldn’t have been as long as it was at 90 minutes. This amount of time is equivalent to many older full-length movies, and some didn’t appreciate putting that much time into Negan’s visit to the “safe zone” in Alexandria. This visit was a repeating cycle of people being sad or giving him an attitude, the latter of which resulted in Rick constantly trying to talk him down. In this scenario, it almost seemed like the show-runners had turned the episode into a sadistic extended version of The Fine Brothers’ reaction videos.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with those videos as they were the launching point of Maisie Williams‘ career.

Forbes blames part of the problem on Daryl, as the character missed an opportunity to simply act as if he was broken and rise in the ranks of Negan’s followers under the clever guise. At this point, Daryl is playing the role Carl did in the comics, meaning that Carl could end up with a reduced role later on instead of being one of the best characters to wield a gun.

The fate of Olivia (Ann Mahoney) seemed to get way too much focus in episode 4, according to the New York Times. As someone who plays such a small role in the series, her execution seemed anti-climactic for what she did, in comparison to Daryl actually blowing up Saviors with a rocket launcher in season 6.

Perhaps Negan can bring more menace in the next few episodes of The Walking Dead before the war with the Kingdom puts him in his place?

[Featured Image by AMC]

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