The Walking Dead: Where Is Negan?

In tonight’s episode of The Walking Dead, Rick and the group headed straight to the Savior’s compound on a hunt for their leader, Negan.

He wasn’t there. So, where is Negan?

Negan is most likely at The Sanctuary. In The Walking Dead comics, Negan holes up at a warehouse guarded by chained up walkers and security guards. It’s certainly not the same place as The Compound and cannot be invaded as easily.

That brings us to the questions, “What and where is the Sanctuary?”

Well, the “where?” part is anybody’s guess at this point. It’s just not very far away. As for the “what?” that’s simple. It’s Negan’s headquarters.

The Sanctuary is where Negan prepares for battle and lays with his many wives – one of which we met earlier this season. Remember that guy who took Daryl’s bike and bow? He’s a Savior who doesn’t want to be a Savior. Next time we see him, he’ll likely have half of his face burnt, courtesy of Negan’s punishment system which involves a hot iron.

We saw that same bike leaving the compound. It caught Daryl’s eye. That is the first sign of Dwight having been caught and returned to the Saviors and spells trouble for Abraham who was killed by an arrow from Dwight in the comics.

As for those who may be arguing that Negan was at compound or photographed there and we just didn’t see him, you’re wrong. I posed the question to executive producer Greg Nicotero, citing Scott Gimple’s claim that Negan could pop up in Not Tomorrow Yet, and he ruled it out now that the episode aired..

“I think the pictures on the wall are pretty self explanatory. What we do very, very well on The Walking Dead is we leave a very clean trail of clues that allows the audience to start putting things together,” Nicotero says. “So, the fact that Glenn sees the Polaroids is meaningful because that’s clearly evidence that these guys are not screwing around. In terms of whether we’ve seen Negan in that compound or not, I don’t think we did. I think if we did, he’d probably be dead because they did a pretty good job of expunging everybody that they found at the compound but they still don’t know who or what he is.”

Here’s the best guess on the series of events to come with consideration of what happened in the comics:

An even exchange will be made for Carol and Maggie’s lives and the man Rick has caught. The two Saviors will tell Negan about what happened and before Rick and the group are able to find him, Negan will find them, making his infamous issue #100 entrance. Will it happen prior to the season finale? We hope so.

To explain the reasoning, in the comics Rick and a couple of others encountered a group of bikers much like Daryl, Abraham and Sasha did on TV. However, one of those men survived and ran back to tell Negan what Rick had done. An infuriated Negan found Rick, Maggie, Glenn and others on their way to the Hilltop and killed one of them to get even and make sure they understood how serious he is.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 PM.