The Walking Dead’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan Explains Negan and Alpha’s “Just Weird Enough” Death Kiss

The Walking Dead star Jeffrey Dean Morgan explains the "just weird enough" kiss Negan shared with Alpha (Samantha Morton) after slitting her throat in Season 10 episode 12, "Walk With Us." There Alpha committed to killing daughter Lydia (Cassady McClincy) after she refused to take her mother's place as leader of the Whisperers, choosing instead to align herself with Daryl (Norman Reedus) and the survivors. After spending just three days among her ranks, becoming the first Whisperer to be intimate with Alpha, Negan used Lydia as bait to lure Alpha to a shack in the woods where he slashed her throat before delivering Alpha's zombified head to Carol (Melissa McBride).

"My thought was, it was a brutal way to go, having your throat slit. I know, having had my own throat slit," Morgan said on Talking Dead about the way Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) defeated Negan some eight years earlier in the Season 8 finale, "Wrath."

Alpha and Negan "had formed kind of this weird relationship in a very short amount of time … he gave her every opportunity to say she wouldn't kill Lydia," Morgan explained. "I don't know exactly what his plan would have been had she said 'I'm not going to kill my daughter,' but I think that Negan had — I won't say sympathy — but there was just a moment that was giving her some peace during that kind of very violent end."

Just before murdering Alpha, Negan opened up about his past when he referenced late wife Lucille, who lost her hair during a battle with pancreatic cancer. Despite their intimacy, there were no real feelings between Negan and Alpha.

"I don't think they were in love or anything," Morgan said. "I know they weren't in love or anything, but it was also just weird enough that I thought [the kiss] was a very Negan thing to do."

The Walking Dead Season 10 next airs episode 15, "The Tower," Sunday, April 5 at 9/8c on AMC. For all things The Walking Dead, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.