The Walking Dead: Michael Cudlitz Says Negan’s Kill Was A Choice And A Sacrifice

Full spoilers for The Walking Dead‘s Season 7 premiere follow.

When Negan started marching around in front of the core members of the Alexandria community to wrap up The Walking Dead‘s sixth season, everyone was under the impression that he was choosing someone to kill at random. The new menace trotted around playing “eeny-meeny-miny-moe” with the candidates before actually selected Abraham as the unlucky winner in the Season 7 premiere.

Given that he marched from one candidate over to Abraham to say, “It,” we can only assume Negan calculated his choice and took out Big Red as a tactical move. While everyone else cowered and broke down before Negan, the physically largest and mentally toughest member of the group kept his posture and looked the villain in the eye.

During a conference call with ComicBook.com this morning, Michael Cudlitz weighed in on whether or not the kill was actually random and if Abraham was trying to bring the bat on himself to help the others.

So far as the eeny-meeny-miney-mo, I think that he was gauging the group. I said this earlier. I do think that Abraham did definitely stand up and literally with a ‘fuck you, take me.’ That’s him sacrificing himself for the group to protect Sasha, because he feels like that is what needs to be done. He would give his life to protect anyone in this group obviously. As anyone, if you have children, it’s the same feeling. I think he feels that he had taken care of these people for a very long time and you are willing to sacrifice yourself for your children. It’s not demeaning anyone else in any way, it’s just saying the love he has for this group is the same as a parent to their kids, and he’s literally willing to die for his brother. He has become a soldier in arms with all of these other people, and he is literally willing to give the ultimate sacrifice.

So far as from Negan’s standpoint, I think it’s a chess game for him. You have to figure, who do you take out? Do you take out the strongest guy to make a point and show that you will take out anyone? Do you take out the weakest to show that you don’t care, which makes you even more twisted in a way? What do you have to do to this group to have the biggest effect? Do you take out the biggest guy, who actually could be an asset to you? It’s interesting.

What he sees as a biggest asset, the kind of personality that he likes best was ultimately in the end is he is intrigued by Darryl. He wants to know what makes Darryl tick. If you look at his group, they all fall in line … There’s definitely a biker element to it. There’s more of an element of not conforming and you can see that Darryl fits more with his group probably than anyone in our group, just from a physical standpoint. You wonder what’s going on there. I think he wants to see what makes him psychologically tick.

Eeny-meeny-miney-mo was deliberately directed at each different person so Negan could greet them, figure them out, look in their eyes and see who he was dealing with, and he did it quite effectively.

While Abraham wasn’t able to save Glenn from his ultimate demise, he did keep Sasha safe for the time being. That’s all that matters for the soldier.

MORE on The Walking Dead season 7 premiere:

Kingdom Preview Released / Norman Reedus On Daryl’s Future / Season 7 Premiere Recap (SPOILERS) / Who Is King Ezekiel / Where’s Daryl Now? / Negan’s Comic Book History /Twitter Reactions to Negan’s Kill / Was the Premiere Too Violent?

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on AMC. For complete coverage and insider info, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter.