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Negan must die for ‘Dead’ to survive

Favorites-killer is a drag on the show’s story and momentum

- Kelly Lawler @klawls

It seems all but inevitable that The Walking Dead will kill Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), its baseball-bat-wielding, sceneryche­wing villain, sometime this season. But I said the same thing at the beginning of last season. And again halfway through it. And yet, Negan is still alive, kicking and siphoning off what little energy the aging series has left.

The AMC zombie series, returning for its eighth season Sunday (9 ET/PT), has a Negan problem. The villain has been at the center of nearly every storyline for almost two years, and he’s a repulsive, tiresome and — worst of all — boring antagonist. His presence and plotting have been a huge reason for the significan­t drop in the show’s quality in Season 7, which also saw a decline in ratings.

If AMC wants The Walking Dead to last for years to come, as its producers say, it needs to kill Negan, and quickly. And it needs to learn from the mistakes it made during his seemingly endless tenure on the series.

From nearly the moment it began to name-drop the villain early in Season 6 (Nov. 2015), Dead handled Negan badly. The character is a big presence in the comic books on which the series is based, and the TV version seemed to rely on that extratextu­al knowledge to give the character gravitas and depth, rather than actually earning it.

The threat posed by Negan and his followers was never clearly articulate­d, and it was impossible to make him seem truly menacing, partly due to the fact that our heroes underestim­ated him. But that choice made the build-up to Negan’s first appearance seem forced.

When Negan finally surfaced, I

Yes, Negan’s scenes were grotesque, but they were also utterly dull. In most, he brought the momentum to a dead stop.

was already tired of him. Morgan is a fine actor, but his interpreta­tion of the character was far too generic. He was evil, sure, but there was little more to him than that.

In Season 7, the series tried to make up for it by spending 16 episodes demonstrat­ing his depravity.

He killed fan favorites Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) in one of the series’ most violent and graphic moments. He tortured one of the series’ most popular characters, Daryl (Norman Reedus), and degraded the other heroes. He regu- larly maimed and murdered his followers and minor supporting characters.

This barrage of barbarity quickly became monotonous. Yes, Negan’s scenes were grotesque, but they were also utterly dull. In most, he brought the momentum to a dead stop. His evil machinatio­ns were more annoying than threatenin­g, his dialogue flat and his scenes a slog.

The Season 7 finale included a climactic battle in which Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his followers defeated Negan’s forces. It seemed like the logical place for the villain to meet his demise, but

against all odds (and a tiger on the battlefiel­d) Negan survived. And, unfortunat­ely, the new season is being hyped as an “all-out war” between Rick and Negan.

Sunday marked The Walking Dead’s 100th episode, and part of the reason the series has survived so long is that it has managed to bounce back from creative downturns. Once the series dispenses with Negan, it can do so again if writers find new villains with some vitality.

But if he outstays his welcome much longer, The Walking Dead will simply be as listless and maddening as its weakest link.

 ?? GENE PAGE, AMC ?? Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his bat, “Lucille,” have dominated The Walking Dead for nearly two seasons.
GENE PAGE, AMC Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his bat, “Lucille,” have dominated The Walking Dead for nearly two seasons.

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