The Walking Dead will still find ways to throw viewers for a loop, and the "romance" on Sunday definitely qualifies. *Spoilers for The Walking Dead's midseason premiere are coming up right now.* It's probably a good bet that no one was expecting Negan and Alpha to do the deed in the middle of the woods. If that wasn't strange enough they both seemed to keep their socks on while they had their intimate moment. That was a bridge too far for some fans as they flooded Twitter with reactions to that particular bit of strangeness. There's also a bunch of responses to the actual intercourse itself, and those are all over the place as well.
Alpha led Negan out into the brush to presumably kill him. Things got a little weird from there as she ordered him to strip and then got undressed herself. Then, Alpha approached him without taking that disgusting mask off and they did it there in the woods. Seeing the two cuddled up in the trees would have been enough to cause a small stir anyway. Adding the socks to the equation was enough to really ignite the conversation though.
"We always felt like we needed some of the story of Alpha, Negan and their strange relationship," The Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang explained in a recent interview. Kang made sure to ask the writer of Squeeze, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, to dial up the comics for inspiration for such a moment. "And he was like, 'Okay! Not quite sure how to get there! Let me work on it!'" Kang remembered. "He came back with this whole storyline where Negan thinks he's about to be killed, but it turns out to be this other thing that sits within Alpha's animalistic philosophy. It's the way she sees exactly who Negan is. She's not wrong about him being a crass man. Negan being Negan thinks, 'Well, it's an opportunity for me!' It came together in this organic and fun way where the writer had a great take on the relationship from the comic book. We had a fun time coming up with a way to show this to our audience in a way that's safe for basic cable but also still surprising."
Check out some of the hysterical responses below: