Warning: this story contains spoilers for Sunday’s “The Rotten Core” episode of The Walking Dead. Negan Smith (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) has had many wives, but only one love: Lucille (Hilarie Burton Morgan). “We would’ve loved to have had a kid,” Negan told Michonne (Danai Gurira) in Season 9 of his beloved wife, who died by suicide as she succumbed to pancreatic cancer. “We would’ve loved to have had a kid like Carl.” While Negan would take a fatherly liking to Carl (Chandler Riggs) and Judith Grimes (Cailey Fleming), there was never a Negan Jr., or another Mrs. Smith.
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Until now.
Sunday’s “The Rotten Core” episode of The Walking Dead revealed Negan and Annie (Medina Senghore) are married — and she’s 12 weeks pregnant with Negan’s child. Six months have passed since he left Alexandria in the mid-season premiere, only to fall in with Annie’s group of tenants holed up inside the Riverbend Apartment Complex where they live.
Negan left because he couldn’t trust Maggie (Lauren Cohan) not to avenge Glenn (Steven Yeun), her husband murdered by Negan years earlier. Negan lives, for now, but he promised to settle the score with Maggie and Glenn’s son when Hershel Rhee (Kien Michael Spiller) has grown up.
“When we left Negan, and he walked off and he left Maggie, we really felt like that was finishing the arc of, ‘I want to be a joiner now, I want to be part of this group, let me redeem myself, let me prove myself.’ Everything really changed when Maggie came [back],” showrunner Angela Kang explained on Talking Dead. “I think if you’re Negan, why would you trust Maggie after what she did at Meridian? We felt like with that headspace, he really went into the world feeling like, ‘I’m just going to start over,’ whatever that looks like. But we know that Negan is a social animal, he really likes to have people to talk to, so it felt to us like he would fall in with a group.”
“He would probably pretty quickly make himself invaluable to some people,” Kang continued. “It felt like if he falls in with a completely different group and there’s no baggage there, he really is in a different headspace where he realizes, ‘If I can wipe the slate clean, can I make some choices that are different this time around? Can I? Have I changed? Can I change?’”
See reactions to the Negan baby below, and follow @CameronBonomolo on Twitter and @NewsOfTheDead for TWD Universe coverage all season long.
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