INQUISITR.COM / Entertainment

‘The Walking Dead’ EP Explains Why Negan Is The Biggest Of The Bad

By Nick Younker
Published on: 09:58 PST, Aug 4, 2016

The Walking Dead Season 6 on AMC is taking cable TV’s top rated show and giving it a boiler plate that will pull the show to the top of the hill and make it stay there for many years to come. The introduction to Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and the Saviors means that The Walking Dead producers are willing to take the most compelling and controversial character from the comic book and make him a TV icon — before he even starts his major run on the show.

There are some things that fans of The Walking Dead already know, but executive producer Gale Ann Hurd has a little more perspective on what’s to come than fans do at this point. When she spoke with E! News at the TCA Press Tour this year, Hurd also gave them some unique insight into what Negan represents to the show, the comic book, and the fans.

Apparently, Gale Ann Hurd was actually in attendance for the TCA Press Tour for her other show on USA, which is titled Falling Water. But E! News was able to grab a quick comment about The Walking Dead for fans who are dying to see Season 6 on AMC.

“I think Negan is the ultimate villain. He’s been the ultimate villain in the comic book, and I think Jeffrey Dean Morgan is bringing him to life the way that I imagined because he is larger than life, he is charismatic, and he really enjoys what he does,” Gale Ann Hurd told E! News about Season 6 of The Walking Dead. “He doesn’t seem to have much of a conscience about it, and that’s the kind of person we haven’t seen before. Everyone else had a justification that they were reasoning as to why they did what they did, some of the evil things. They always had an excuse. Well, Negan rules.”

Just consider what has made a good villain in both comic books and onscreen over the years. It is likely a good thing that The Walking Dead first appeared in comic books because they have classically been given the latitude they need to make for some of the most interesting and engaging characters across all mediums. Where TV shows (of the past) have been limited by what their own censors would allow on the air and films have been constricted to obtaining better ratings and onscreen time, comic books have been the medium that keeps going from issue to issue, year to year.

A good villain is not quite what David Morrissey made out the Governor to be on Seasons 3 and 4 of The Walking Dead, but that does not mean that he did not play that role with absolute precision. The Governor still had a conscience that he worked from, but he was quite a bit more loose with what he would accept.

As far as The Walking Dead goes, Negan has been freed from that conscience and he may very well be a sociopath with no capacity for empathy. His only driving force is his own code and his desire to rule over the wasteland of a post-apocalyptic America following the zombie fallout.

In the apocalypse, sociopaths are the ones who are most likely to survive. More to the point, it is a bit astonishing that The Walking Dead has not featured more of them in their comic books or show at this point.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that those people on The Walking Dead who have been considered big-bads in the past were sociopaths. Those people still had the capacity for empathy and did not go into the zombie apocalypse with soulless characteristics. They were more of a product of The Walking Dead apocalypse.

[Image via AMC]

Share this article: ‘The Walking Dead’ EP Explains Why Negan Is The Biggest Of The Bad
News the walking dead
More from Inquisitr