The Walking Dead season 10’s been a big year for Negan. Following on from his saving Judith in the season 9 finale, he started to get more freedom at Alexandria, though it looked like he’d gone rogue again when he escaped jail and joined up with the Whisperers. Ultimately, Negan chopped off Alpha’s head, bringing to an end the long mission he’d been sent on by Carol to complete. And though his true loyalties to the survivors have been made clear now, it’s not like he’s being welcomed with open arms.
In the penultimate episode, “The Tower,” Negan had a loaded chat with Lydia, Alpha’s estranged daughter, who made clear that he’d never be accepted by the communities no matter what he did. While speaking to Entertainment Weekly, showrunner Angela Kang promised that there will be some more exploration of this in the season 10 finale and in season 11, saying:
“We’ll see a little bit more of that in the episode to air and in time to come,” Kang said. “But look, he killed Alpha. That’s great. But he was also standing outside of Hilltop and shot fire arrows at their walls and now an entire community of people, combined community of people, since the Kingdom folded into the Hilltop has no home. And I think it’s complicated and I think he has a good argument of ‘This is what I had to do to get it done.’ And other people are going to feel like, ‘Well, if you’re right next to her with a fire arrow, why not shoot it into her head instead of at our house?'”
We’ve already seen how different people treat Negan based on their outlooks. Carol was willing to work with him, as Melissa McBride explained, because she didn’t personally witness his worst crimes. However, Daryl certainly did, so he’s always going to be wary of teaming up with the former Savior.
Kang went on to say that we can expect more differing perspectives on Negan to come as well, explaining:
“Negan is always complicated, and he has been on this interesting road where he’s trying to fold into our group and they clearly didn’t kick him out of the group, but I think depending on the person, they’re going to have a very different interpretation of events and how they feel about him,” Kang added. “But, for now, they’re all just trying to make it through.”
The situation they’re trying to make it through is being surrounded by Beta’s walker army, where we left the survivors at the end of episode 15. And they’ll be stuck in that scenario until The Walking Dead returns to AMC sometime later this year for its finale, “A Certain Doom.”