Negan

Negan is a fictional character of The Walking Dead franchise and a central antagonist in both TWD's comic book saga and AMC's television series.

He served as the main antagonist throughout the events between Volume 17: Something to Fear and in Volume 21: All Out War, Part 2 before becoming an anti-hero from Volume 27: The Whisperer War and onwards. He is also the titular main protagonist of his backstory; Here's Negan.

In the television series, he served as the unseen overarching antagonist in the second half of Season 6 before becoming the primary antagonist throughout Seasons 7 and Season 8; he is set to reappear in Season 9.

SEASON 6
While Rick Grimes and his group (consisting of his son Carl, Eugene Porter, Abraham Ford, Sasha Williams and Aaron) take Maggie to the Hilltop Colony, they get surrounded by Negan and his Saviors. They have also captured Daryl Dixon, Glenn Rhee, Michonne and Rosita Espinosa. After forcing the group to their knees and having them all in complete fear towards Negan (except for Carl and Abraham, both of whom show little to no fear towards him), Negan sternly yet casually tells Rick and his group that they now work for him, and seeing how experienced and tough Rick and his group are and how they managed to kill dozens of Negan's people with minimum effort, Negan is really impressed and sees them as potentially very useful for his cause, but he does berate and taunt Rick for being so overconfident and cocky into believing that he and his group could beat Negan and all of his Saviors, despite knowing next to nothing about Negan's organization and not knowing the true terrifying force and power that they represent. Negan demands half of their supplies once a week, otherwise he'll destroy Alexandria and kill them all. However, as retribution for Rick and his group ruthlessly killing dozens of his people, Negan savagely and mercilessly kills a member of Rick's group with his infamous baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire, which he names "Lucille". Negan's victim was not revealed until the, due to Negan's attack only being seen from his victim's point of view.

SEASON 7
The kill was revealed to be Abraham. Defiant to the end, Abraham told Negan to "suck [his] nuts", prompting Negan to violently smash the rest of Abraham's head in. After laughing off Abraham's defiance, Negan then proceeded to taunt Rosita upon guessing that she and Abraham were in a relationship. After telling Rosita to look at Abraham's corpse, Negan was then punched across the jaw by an angry Daryl, who was then quickly restrained. Daryl's emotional outburst prompted Negan to kill another person (which Negan had promised to do if there was another outburst). As such, Negan killed Glenn next, beating his head to a bloody pulp, all while laughing at the latter's attempt to utter a message of reassurance to Maggie.

After finishing beating Glenn to death, Negan remarks that Lucille is a "vampire bat". When everyone remaining in Rick's group continue crying, Negan asks if the joke was real 'that bad'. Rick swears to kill Negan and avenge both Abraham and Glenn. Negan is amused by Rick's words, and drags him into the RV with a hatchet Rick had on him sheathed in his belt. Negan places the hatchet on the table inside, and attempts to start up the RV. He tells Rick his best chance to "kill him" is to grab the hatchet and drive it into his head. Rick gets up, grabs the weapon and attempts to do this, but Negan spins around with an assault rifle in hand. Rick drops the hatchet, and Negan sticks the blade into the table. The two drive off together, and Negan repeatedly runs over walkers, asking Rick if they "remind him of anyone he knows". Negan pulls over in an area full of walkers, and uses Lucille to kill two before tossing the hatchet out the door and onto the roof of the RV. He orders Rick to get "his (Negan's) axe". Rick complies, and after a lengthy struggle with Negan providing covering fire with the assault rifle, brings the hatchet back inside. Negan drives back to the location where The Saviors and the rest of Rick's group are still waiting, the morning after the night of Glenn and Abraham's deaths.

Negan puts Carl Grimes onto the ground, and tells his Saviors to put guns to the back of everyone else in the line up. With doing it, he takes a black marker pen from Simon, then, he uses it to draw a line around the boy's left arm. Then, he demands Rick to take the hatchet and chop off his son's left arm, or else everyone present will be killed, everyone in Alexandria will be killed, and Rick will be left alive for a number of years "just so he can stew on it". Rick tearfully pleads, insisting it should be him and not his son. After almost doing it, Negan stops Rick and told him he just wanted to prove him a point about himself, and wanted to see the scared face of Rick. Rick is now completely emotionally broken and fully submits to Negan's superiority and demands. Negan then orders Dwight to take Daryl prisoner and threatens to mutilate Daryl, or bring Daryl to Rick and force Rick to mutilate Daryl himself, if Rick tries to rebel against Negan again. Negan and his Saviors then leave Rick and the remaining members of his group with the corpses of Glenn and Abraham, and Negan says they'll be back for Alexandria's first offering in one week.

Negan keeps Daryl locked in a small room at The Sanctuary, naked and only fed dog-food sandwiches by Dwight. The song Easy Street by The Collapsable Hearts Club is played on constant repeat throughout the day outside the door to Daryl's prison, even be used as an alarm to wake him up in the mornings. Over time, Daryl is eventually giving a footless jumpsuit to be used as a prisoner's uniform. One day, a Savior leaves Sanctuary, and Negan sends Dwight after him. When Dwight catches up to him, the Savior refuses to come back with him, saying he's done with being a slave to a tyrannical thug. Dwight shoots him and brings his corpse back to the Sanctuary to be used on "the wall", the chain-link fence surrounding Sanctuary that is covered with chained-up and speared-down walkers.

After Fat Joey, another Savior, takes over for Dwight during his retrieval mission and purposefully leaves the door to the cell unlocked, Daryl attempts to escape but is captured by Negan and a few Saviors. Negan goes around asking each present Savior who they are, and every time they reply with "Negan". Negan explains to Daryl that, if he plays by his rules, he can be freed from his prison and "live like a king". When Daryl doesn't respond, Negan pretends to swing Lucille at Daryl's head. Daryl, however, doesn't flinch, which Negan is very impressed by. He leaves to go a drink, and orders his Saviors to beat up Daryl.

Daryl is dropped back into his cell, and Dwight puts up a Polaroid of Glenn's smashed-in head on the wall next to him before closes the door and playing Roy Orbinson's Crying. Daryl slowly but surely breaks down into tears of guilt as Dwight listens from the outside.

Negan has Dwight bring Daryl in to see him sometime later. Negan explains to Daryl how Dwight broke the rules and took Sherry and Tina (whom Negan was going to make one of his "wives"), but eventually came back after realizing the so-called error of his ways. However, because he got Tina killed in the process, Dwight was going to be killed. Sherry stepped up and volunteered to become Negan's wife in Tina's place, which Negan accepted after burning half of Dwight's face off with "the iron". He concludes that everything is "cool" with him and Dwight now, and Daryl can be freed from his prison and live amongst the Saviors with his own clothes and real food. Negan asks "who are you", and Daryl responds with "Daryl", bitterly declining Negan's offer. Negan sends Daryl back to his cell, where an angry Dwight tells him he'll die in The Sanctuary as a result of his choices.

Negan shows up with a large group of Saviors (as well as Daryl in his prisoner's uniform) at the Alexandria Safe-Zone less than one week after killing Abraham and Glenn. Using Lucille to bang on the gate, Negan calls out "little pig, little pig, let me in." Spencer Monroe looks at Negan, questioning who he is. An amused Negan states that Spencer must be joking, since he and Lucille "must have made an impression". Negan and his crew are let in after Negan kills a stray walker with Lucille (which he deems a show of good-willed "service"'), and Rick attempts to show them where they've set aside supplies for them. Negan states that they won't take meager, predetermined offerings, but rather will scour the entire compound and take half of whatever they please.

Negan walks around the safe-zone with Rick, who is forced to hold Lucille for him, as The Saviors take mattresses, food, and anything else they can find. Negan asks where Maggie is, since he figures that a grieving widow would make an easy wife for him. Father Gabriel Stokes walks up behind Negan, asking if he'd like to see her 'grave' (which is empty as a means of tricking The Saviors into thinking she's dead, keeping her safe from them), and Negan calls the priest "creepy as shit" for sneaking up on him.

Negan looks over the grave with Rick and Gabriel, expressing sympathies towards their apparent loss. A gunshot is heard, and Negan angrily storms off towards it as Rick follows, terrified. Carl has a group of Saviors at gunpoint in the infirmary, having fired a round into the air in an attempt to scare them, threatening to shoot them unless they put the medicine back. Negan and Rick arrive on scene, both wanting to know what's going on. Carl says the Saviors are taking all of their medicine, and that they need to leave before they realize how dangerous Alexandria and its residents are. Negan, amazed by Carl's nerve, asks if that was a threat, to which Carl remains silent. The Saviors walk off with the medicine, and Negan decides that due tot he current bad blood Rick has with Negan, they should take away all of their guns and ammunition as well.

The Saviors start loading up every handgun, assault rifle, shotgun, and other firearm in Alexandria, along with the ammunition. Negan takes a handgun, playfully points it at Daryl, and then suddenly fires a bullet through a nearby window as a means of scaring Rick. Arat, one of Negan's Lieutenants, shoves Olivia out from one of the weapons storage rooms. Negan, in a show of emotion, angrily tells Arat to leave Olivia alone and that "we don't do that unless they do something to deserve that". Arat informs Negan that, according to the armory logs, they are two guns short: a Glock 9 and a 22 Bobcat. Negan tells Rick and Olivia that, if they are not given the two handguns in a timely manner, Olivia will have to be killed as punishment for the oversight.

Rick eventually finds the weapons hidden inside Spencer's home, and gives them to Negan. Negan lets Olivia go, and prepares to leave. Michonne returns with the carcass of a deer she accidentally shot while practicing with a sniper rifle. Negan and The Saviors take both the meat and the weapon, and Negan asks Rick to give him Lucille back. Before departing, Negan kills one more walker outside the gates with a large candlestick, and tells Rick "I just slid my dick down your throat, and you thanked me for it". Negan's trucks pull off, and Rick is left to look at the bodies of the two walkers Negan had killed during his visit, reminding him of Abraham and Glenn.

After Carl hides in the back of one of Negan's trucks at Hilltop with Paul "Jesus" Rovia, Carl tricks the latter into jumping out of the moving car, saying he'll follow his lead and the two will proceed to walk to The Sanctuary. After grabbing an M16, Carl shoots a Savior who attempts to unload Gregory's alcohol from the same truck. Carl steps out, aiming his weapon at the other Saviors, stating that he only wants Negan and nobody else has to die. Negan, amused by Carl's actions, jokes that he grabbed the M16 because it "looks cool". Carl, frozen with performance anxiety and unable to shoot Negan, doesn't pull the trigger when his target is in his sights.

A Savior attempts to rush Carl's right, but Carl turns and kills a second of Negan's men. Dwight, taking opportunity of Carl's temporary distraction, tackles him to the ground and aims the gun to his head angrily as Daryl watches from The Wall in shock. Negan orders Dwight to leave Carl alone, stating that he's their guest and that he should be given a tour of The Sanctuary. Negan offers Carl his hand to help him get back up, which Carl reluctantly accepts. Negan takes Carl inside, shows him how his followers respect him by having them bow down to his presence, and takes him up to his wives' room, where he drinks alcohol, eats food served to him by Daryl and Dwight, and questions Amber and Sherry about the latter having an affair with her ex-boyfriend, Mark. He orders Dwight to prepare "the iron", and takes Carl to another, separate lounge room.

Negan asks Carl to take off the bandage covering his shot-out eye, stating that he owes him a "Christmas present" for killing two of his men earlier. Carl does so, and shows Negan his empty, raw socket. Negan, amazed by the image, starts commenting on how it's "gross as shit" and how he "wants to touch it". Carl begins softly crying, and Negan shows true remorse for his cruel comments, stating that he didn't mean to hurt Carl that way and that it's easy to forget that he's still a kid. Carl tells him to "forget it", and the two are interrupted by Joseph, who carried Lucille up from Negan's truck to him. Negan jokes about Joseph treating Lucille like a "lady" and performing sexual acts on her. He then rudely dismisses him, and tells Carl to sing him a song.

Carl begins singing "You Are My Sunshine" as Negan practices swinging Lucille behind him. Carl begins crying again, and Negan compliments his singing, asking where he heard the song. Negan guesses it was Carl's mother who sang it to him, and proceeds to ask where she is. Carl explains that he had to shoot her in the head to prevent her from turning into a walker. Negan comments that such an event would explain how Carl is "a little serial killer in the making". He tells Carl "the iron" should be ready.

Negan and Carl go downstairs, where Mark is tied to a chair with everyone in The Sanctuary watching as Dwight heats a metal iron over a large furnace. Negan instructs Carl to hold Lucille for him, and gives a speech to his people about how the rules he has instated keep them alive, and breaking them requires punishment. He takes the red-hot iron, and presses it against Mark's face as he screams in agony. After twenty seconds, Mark passes out and urinates himself, and Negan peels the iron (along with some melted skin) off of Mark's face. Negan tells two of his people to take Mark to the clinic, and orders Daryl to mop up Mark's urine off the floor. Negan walks up to Carl, who had seen the entire ordeal, and comments that he must think he's insane after doing such a thing.

Later, Carl asks if he can put his bandage back on, and Negan tells him he can't until he gives him permission. He then asks what he should do to punish Carl further for killing his men, to which Carl angrily tells him he should jump out the nearby window to save him the trouble of killing him. Negan, amused, tells Carl he scares him. Negan and some Saviors load up some trucks and drive off to Alexandria, with Negan having Carl drive the truck he's in. As they drive past Daryl, Negan tells him he's taking Carl home. Daryl begins to threaten Negan if he hurts Carl, to which Negan responds with having Dwight lock Daryl back up in his cell for a "time-out". As Daryl is taken back to his prison, Negan gives him the middle finger and Carl proceeds to drive off with Negan in tow.

Negan, Carl, and some Saviors arrive at Alexandria in their trucks, and Negan asks Carl to show him his house. Carl does so, and the two are let in by Olivia, who was babysitting Judith. Negan says he plans to stick around until Rick gets back from a scavenging mission he and Aaron went on for Negan, which Olivia explains is due to a shortage of food in the community. Negan mocks Olivia's weight by tying it to the food shortage, and Olivia begins crying. Negan apologizes, and offers to have sex with Olivia. She slaps him, and began smiles before telling her he's "50% more into her right now".

Negan tells Olivia to go make him lemonade, and has Carl show him around the house. He comes across Judith, and starts holding her despite Carl's efforts to keep him from finding her. Negan goes into the bathroom and shaves his beard as Carl and Judith watch, giving Carl the advice to always go 'against the grain'. Negan takes Carl into the kitchen, and the two begin to make biscuit rolls and spaghetti with marinara sauce together. Negan and Carl set a table for four, and a terrified Olivia comes back with instant-lemonade given to her by Tara. Negan, upset that Rick hasn't returns yet, places Lucille in his seat and asks Carl to pass the rolls.

Later, Negan is seen sitting on a porch, guarded by Arat. Spencer Monroe shows up with a bottle of wine in an attempt to suck up to Negan and get his help in overthrowing Rick, and Negan lets him sit next to him. They drink together, and Negan states that he likes Alexandria so much he may get a "vacation home" there. Negan laments the fact that he can't play billiards, and Spencer tells him that one of the other houses has a table in the garage. The two set up a game in the street, and a crowd composed of Alexandrians and Saviors alike gather around to watch. As the game goes on, Spencer talks to Negan about how Rick is a danger to the community, and that Negan and he would work together better. Negan listens to him, but makes the point that while Rick is out doing his new job and collecting supplies for The Saviors, Spencer stayed behind to go behind Rick's back and get Negan to do his dirty work for him. Negan comments that the reason behind this is because Spencer has no "guts", and stabs him in the abdomen with his knife. Negan yanks the blade sideways, and Spencer's intestines fall out of him as he dies almost instantly.

Negan mockingly states that he was wrong and that Spencer did, in fact, have "guts" inside him the whole time. The Alexandrians in the crowd look on in horror, and Negan asks if anyone wants to continue playing with him. Rosita takes out her handgun and, using the bullet Eugene manufactured for her, fires at Negan. However, the bullet hits Lucille instead, which was in the way, saving Negan's life. Enraged at the damage caused to his prized possession, and the attempt on his life, Negan threatens to have Arat mutilate Rosita's face so that she and Lucille are equally disfigured, unless she tells him who made the bullet. Rosita falsely confesses to making the bullet and cuts her on face on the knife to take the punishment, impressing Negan.

After that, he tells Arat to "kill somebody", and as Rosita pleads for it to be her since it was her fault, Arat shoots Olivia in the face, killing her instantly. Rick shows up and demands to know what's going on. Negan explains to him everything that happened with Carl, Spencer, and Olivia, and Rick demands that Negan and his Saviors take the supplies he and Aaron had found for them and leave. Negan obliges, but insists on finding out who manufactured the bullet first, since the crimps on it indicate it was homemade. Rosita attempts to convince him it was her, and then Tara steps in stating it was her, until Eugene speaks up and admits it was him.

Negan then takes Eugene with him, leaving Rick and the rest of Alexandria with Spencer (who reanimates into a walker before Rick puts him down) and Olivia's corpses.

When Negan finds out Daryl has escaped, he orders Simon to visit Alexandria and search via radio. He has a group of Saviors beat up Dwight, as punishment for having Daryl escape. He locks him in the same cell he had Dwight lock Daryl in, and questions his loyalty. Negan then orders Dwight to find Sherry and bring her back.

Personality
Negan has a unique personality. He has a penchant for provocation and power games. The stronger the resistance to his will, the more he seems to enjoy the test of wills. With insight rarely associated to violent antagonists, Negan appears to both observe and appreciate the concerns and intentions of his opposite numbers. This gives him a serious psychological advantage in most contest of wills, as he is able to anticipate and preempt an enemy's plans.

He is a very intelligent, logical, clever and brilliant strategist. While he can be very intimidating, dangerous and brutal, he is also a strangely charismatic man with a twisted sense of humour, and with this humour comes frequent cursing. Also, while he can be very casual and jolly when speaking to an ally or enemy, he has a temper that can frighten just about anybody. Despite being a violent, sadistic and murderous sociopath, he does have a compassionate and insightful side to him that comes out at times: this is shown when he makes fun of Carl's damaged eye and when Carl begins to cry, Negan quickly apologizes to the poor boy.

Also, when Negan makes fun of Olivia's weight and makes her cry, he regrets it and apologizes to her, and then offers to have sex with her if she wants to, but an offended Olivia slaps him in the face, causing Negan's men to aim their guns at her, ready to kill her. However, Negan orders his men to stand down since he knows that he crossed the line. This shows that whenever Negan crosses the line when he insults someone, he almost immediately tries to make up for it and can't bring himself to ignore it. Furthermore, Negan always follows his moral code: as much as he loves violence, he absolutely hates sexual violence as he finds it "unseemly", and he will not hesitate to kill anyone who commits sexual violence of any kind, friend or foe. He believes that if anyone in his group of Saviors are to commit rape, then their goal of rebuilding civilization can never be achieved.

As well as his dislike towards rape, Negan also dislikes killing people, which is never shown by any of the other main antagonists in the series, save for Chris and The Hunters. Negan really only wants to install fear in other people and tries to keep as many people alive as possible, hence why he called his group "The Saviors". Also, he is willing to spare anyone whom he sees as potentially useful and can be reasonable during negotiations, and he is a man of his word as he promises to help communities clear out walkers near their homes and will not destroy their communities, as long as they give him half of everything they have once a week. Unlike other villains in the past, such as The Governor and Thomas Richards, Negan is always true to himself and is a very honest and dependable man; it is not really in his nature to lie, even if his honesty is brutal. Despite seemingly having little empathy and remorse, he can occasionally be remorseful. Unlike many other villains throughout the series, Negan does not underestimate his enemies, at least not as much as other villains do; he knows full well how battle-experienced and dangerous Rick and his group are and as a result, he admires their skills and views them as extremely useful for his cause, hence why he keeps them alive. However, he does kill one of their group members, Glenn, when they kill a dozen of his men, showing that while he wants to keep potentially useful survivors alive in order for them to work for him, Negan does not tolerate other survivors killing his men, and will give the survivors a severe but fair punishment by killing at least one member of their group. He also has a weird and disturbing relationship with his baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire, "Lucille", indicating that he is an objectophiliac. However, it is later on revealed in his back-story, Here's Negan, that he named his baseball bat after his deceased wife, Lucille, whom he loved and he wanted to dedicate his bat to her.

Quotes
"Anybody moves, anybody says anything, cut the boys other eye out and feed it to his father, and THEN we'll start. You can breathe..... You can blink..... You can CRY...... Hell, you're ALL gonna be doing THAT."

- Negan ordering his Saviors to keep the rest of Rick and his group literally in line while he executes of them with Lucille.

"You bunch of p--ies! I'm just getting started..."

- Negan after killing Abraham and Glenn.

"NOT making a decision? Is a BIIIIG decision! You really want to see all these people die?! You will! You will see every! Ugly! Thing!""

- Negan threatening Rick.

"WOW! You do not scare easy...... I LOVE THAT!"

- Negan commenting on Daryl's constitution.

"This is the kind of thing that just tickles my balls!"

- Negan, remarking how much he enjoys Rick and company's "service" to him and his group.

"All jokes aside, you look rad as hell. I wouldn't cover that shit up. It may not be a hit with the ladies, but I swear to you - no one is gonna screw with you looking like that, no sir!"

- Negan suggesting to Carl that he should leave his eye wound exposed to instill fear

Trivia

 * TO BE ADDED!