Dead City Ups the Ante With One of Negan's Most Brutal Scenes Yet

The world The Walking Dead franchise is set in is a brutal and unforgiving place where the survivors are often forced to leave the old world morals behind to stay alive. Now, Negan has been perhaps one of the most brutal characters on the show: he has murdered many people in the most savage ways(we will never be able to unsee him bashing Glenn's head in with a baseball bat), but towards the end of the main series he's been given a redemption arc.

Two years after The Walking Dead finale, he is a changed man: his outlook on the world around him and his methods are different. But when push comes to shove, the old instincts kick in, and the ends(survival) justify the means(brutal murder).

Maggie, Glenn's widow, who had a front-row seat when Negan brutally murdered her husband, seeks him out to help her save her and Glenn's son, Hershel, who has been abducted by one of Negan's former saviour accomplices and is now being held captive in a zombie-infested New York.

So the two former mortal enemies go on a noble quest together, and Negan keeps up the changed man act with seemingly little effort until things get out of hand, and the psycho Negan of the Walking Dead Season 6 vintage comes back with a vengeance, putting on such brutal performances of gore and violence that even actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who portrays the character, is often left in shock.

'The face-grating killed me. I was like, "Really? I'm going to get him with a face-grater?" But this is a guy that's like 6-foot-6, and 200-some-odd-pounds of muscle. You know, Negan is not that guy,' the actor shared.

In one scene in the third episode, Luther, one of the tribespeople who are helping Negan and Maggie, learns that Negan is wanted. Negan has to act fast, and the only thing he has to hand is a cheese grater, so he grabs it and goes to work on Luther: it's a kill-or-be-killed world.

'But that survival instinct kicks in with "What can I use to, to fight back?" A cheese grater happened to be at hand, and that gets that guy off of him,' Morgan elaborated.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan believes it's clear his character doesn't want things to turn that ugly and even tries to talk sense into Luther. But, a changed man though Negan may be, old habits die hard, and when survival is at stake, he goes into full psycho mode.

'Negan is Negan, and if it means pushing him down on that pipe that's coming out of the ground and giving a little smile, there he is!'

It would seem that even though Negan has really changed, his old psycho self isn't gone, it's just been tamed, and he can channel it whenever the situation calls for it. We can just hope he doesn’t let it take full control in the end.

The Walking Dead: Dead City's next episode will be released on 9 July.

Source: Entertainment Weekly.