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‘The Walking Dead’ Season 7, Episode 4 Review: Negan’s Popularity Is Dying A Slow Death

By Hemal Vora
Published on: 03:15 PST, Nov 14, 2016

The Walking Dead in its fourth episode has continued the recent tradition of breaking each episode into one group’s story. This week in The Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 4, we are at Alexandria, where Negan arrives to collect his fair share.

Episode 4 was a feature episode with 59 minutes and 21 seconds run time. Since the announcement last week, fans were expecting some big revelations and good action. Nothing of that sort happened as the Episode 4 was completely focused on building Negan’s character further.

Negan, during the entire Episode 4, makes it clear that he is in charge. To do so, he even makes Rick hold Lucille. It is evident that Rick more than once thinks about bashing Negan’s brain out. But he does not do anything of that sort.

Negan, to the surprise of Alexandria’s residents, arrives with Daryl. Rick tries talking to him, but Negan clearly instructs him not to do so. He said that Daryl was a help, so no one should look or talk with him.

Negan leaves no stone unturned in breaking the people of Alexandria. Instead of taking half of everything, he sends his men to take whatever they can find. To make things worse, Rick does not hide any of the guns. Rick’s helplessness can be easily understood from the statement he made to his people.

“Let me put this as clearly as I can, I’m not in charge anymore. Negan is.”

Before leaving, Negan and the Saviors had taken all the guns, burned mattresses, and threatened to kill more people. Basically, Negan kills any thought that Rick or the people of Alexandria might have of giving it back to him.

There was nothing much regarding actions, but The Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 4 did reveal some plots. Rick admits that Judith is not his daughter and her real father is Shane. Rick tells Michonne, “I know Judith isn’t mine.”

Fans are unable to understand why Negan, The Walking Dead Season 7’s latest antagonist, has been given so much screen time. The producers are probably trying to establish Negan’s dominance and brutality, but that part was made evident in the first episode.

Fans have liked Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan since the first episode. But the repeated gloating, verbal posturing, and rhetorical questioning are doing more harm to Negan’s character on the show than any good.

Negan at present is the character that is holding the show together. But it is turning out to be a difficult task bringing the comic’s Negan, live on The Walking Dead Show. But in the show too, we have had The Governor, who was a sociopathic tyrant but his acts were not repeated so much. Just to make Negan’s character more evil than Governor, he has been given so much screen time with the same monologs.

The Walking Dead Season 7 introduced fans to Negan. But there has been no back-story yet on who he was before he became, “Negan.” As reported by Vox, the show has not revealed how he has managed to stay at the top with just a baseball bat with barbed wires.

The Counterargument is that the focus on Negan is a build up before he is defeated. But fans are losing interest due to the boring characterization of Negan. The highly anticipated character on the show is turning out to be a show stopper. Unless writers tone the monotony from the show, The Walking Dead comic’s most loved character Negan will die a slow death on the show.

Next week, The Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 5, will focus on The Hilltop with Maggie and Shasha. Negan might reach there too, and it would be interesting to see if and when he finds out that Maggie is alive and Father Gabriel had lied about her death.

[Featured Image by AMC]

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