‘The Walking Dead’Season Finale Recap: “Here’s Negan” Wins Fan Praise

After being extended by six extra episodes, The Walking Dead aired its season 10 finale on April 4 on AMC. The original intended season 10 finale aired on October 10, 2020. Despite the excitement that originally surrounded the new episodes at the time, the majority of the additional installments received mixed to negative reviews from fans and critics alike, who panned the episodes for their poor pacing and contributing almost nothing to the overall story of the show. Many fans who watch the series agreed that these episodes are mainly filler and basically didn’t need to exist.

However, unlike the other bonus episodes, the season finale, titled “Here’s Negan,” received critical acclaim from fans, who considered it to be one of the best episodes in the entire series, praising the story, acting and emotional ending. Based on the comic book story of the same name, “Here’s Negan” centers on the former antagonist Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and reveals his origin story on how he became such a monster during the apocalypse. In the episode, Negan is kicked out of the Alexandria Safe Zone following the arrival of Maggie (Lauren Cohan), who still harbors a deep hatred of him after he brutally murdered her husband Glenn (Steven Yuen) in front of her while she was pregnant years prior. After finding his infamous baseball bat that he lost during Season 8, Negan reflects on the last few days he had with his terminally ill wife Lucille, who is played by Morgan’s real-life wife Hilarie Burton.

The episode takes the audience on a journey through various flashbacks that show Negan’s transformation into an antagonist. It is revealed that in addition to losing his job as a gym teacher for assaulting a parent, Negan cheated on Lucille on the day she found out that she had cancer. Filled with guilt, Negan does his absolute best to make it up to her by helping her through her chemotherapy during the beginning of the apocalypse. After trying to find more chemotherapy drugs for Lucille, Negan is captured by a group of hostile bikers and forced to give up the location of a mobile clinic in order to get the drugs back to his wife. Unfortunately, Negan discovers that Lucille committed suicide while he was gone and turned into a zombie. This tragic event breaks Negan, who burns his house down with his wife in it and returns to the bar where the bikers held him hostage. After saving the mobile clinic workers from the bikers, Negan exacts his revenge on the leader (Rod Rowland) by brutally beating his skull in with a baseball bat, cementing his transformation into the villain that the audience was introduced to in Season 6. After burning the bat in the present day, Negan makes peace with his troubled past and returns to Alexandria, fully prepared to face Maggie’s wrath if she chooses to go after him.