The Walking Dead season 10 finale might have aired last year, but that doesn’t mean things are over. COVID-19 delays have meant that season 11 won’t be with us until 2022, but to fill the gap, AMC is bringing us season 10C, six new episodes that’ll begin airing next month exploring characters and events intended to round out the world of the show.
For me, the most exciting is “Here’s Negan.” This is loosely based on Robert Kirkman’s standalone comic volume of the same name that fills out the backstory of Negan and shows his first days of survival during the Walker plague. In the comic, civilization falls just as his wife Lucille dies of cancer, with her turning in her hospital bed. Filled with guilt for having an affair during her illness, he resolves to never be weak again and begins the journey into the intimidating figure we all know.
The TV show looks to be preserving the broad strokes of the comic while changing some key things. AMC has just released a table read for the opening moments of the episode and it sees Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s real-life wife Hilarie Burton Morgan playing Lucille. The short excerpt finds the married couple hiding away from the world in some kind of bunker with a generator, a box set of James Bond DVDs and a dwindling supply of pharmaceuticals. As in the comic, the TV series’ Lucille is also dying of cancer, so it’s possible if not likely that Negan is going to have to deal with her when she turns.
“Here’s Negan” is already being hyped up by the production staff, with Executive Producer Scott Gimple describing it as “one of the most brilliant episodes” in the show’s ten-year history. Even this brief table read looks very promising, so I can’t wait to check it out.
Season 10C of The Walking Dead begins airing on AMC on February 28th, with “Here’s Negan” scheduled for April 4th.