The Walking Dead: Dead City continues its subtle rewrite of Negan’s past, but The Croat’s backstory creates a notable Carl Grimes plot hole. The introduction of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan on The Walking Dead was a branching path for the series. The sheer brutality of his introduction turned many longtime viewers off the series, but for those who stayed, Negan became one of the most compelling characters. This is largely thanks to Morgan’s performance, but the character’s path from repulsive villain to likable anti-hero has been one of the most intriguing arcs of The Walking Dead’s later seasons.
The Walking Dead: Dead City is continuing Negan’s redemption tour, where he and former mortal enemy Maggie (Laurie Cohan) are forced once again to become reluctant allies. Maggie’s son Hershel (Logan Kim) has been kidnapped by new villain The Croat (Željko Ivanek) and taken to Manhattan, with The Croat being a former protege of Negan himself. In many ways, The Croat is a Negan copycat and shows who he could have become had he stayed as head of The Saviors. The Walking Dead: Dead City episode 4 “Everybody Wins a Prize” also opens with a flashback to Negan’s Saviors days, and how he turned against The Croat.
The Problem With Negan’s “No Kids” Rule In The Walking Dead
As Negan himself explained to Maggie in a previous The Walking Dead: Dead City episode, The Croat had survived unimaginable loss, with The Saviors taking him in and making him their torturer. While Negan explains he was only a monster when he needed to be, he came to realize The Croat delighted in the pain he caused. This was seen when he captured and tortured a young girl who turned out to be a Kingdom scout, despite being ordered by Negan to let her go.
Dead City episode 4 “Everybody Wins a Prize” flashes back to this moment, where Negan’s former Walking Dead henchman Simon (Steven Ogg) leads him to The Croat’s torture room and he can see firsthand what happened to the girl. While angrily confronting The Croat over his actions, Simon tells him that hurting kids is a line The Saviors never cross. Of course, Walking Dead viewers will recall this rule seemingly wasn’t enforced by Negan himself, considering his treatment of the teenage Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs) in previous seasons. In fact, Negan came close to hurting or killing Carl on more than one occasion.
Explaining Negan Almost Killing Carl In The Walking Dead
Carl was part of the infamous lineup sequence from The Walking Dead’s season 6 finale cliffhanger and season 7 premiere. This was when The Saviors captured Rick Grimes’ (Andrew Lincoln) group, with Negan making his introduction and laying down the law. Negan went on to beat both Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) and Glenn (Steven Yeun) to death in the most controversial moment of the entire series, and not only was Carl a witness to this, it felt like there was a good chance Negan could have killed him instead.
That same episode almost saw Negan force Rick to chop off Carl’s hand to teach him a further lesson, only to show mercy at the final second. Maybe this was all an elaborate bluff on Negan’s part to show Rick and the gang he wasn’t messing around, and that he never truly intended Carl to be harmed. Assuming the rule The Walking Dead: Dead City’ establishes about The Saviors not harming children is true, then the second time Negan almost killed Carl is way harder to explain.
The Walking Dead’s season 7 finale “The First Day of the Rest of Your Life” saw the tensions between Alexandria and The Saviors come to a boil. Near the end of the episode, Negan once again captures Rick and Carl, and for their transgressions, Negan intends to kill Carl in front of his father. He picks up Lucille and is less than a second away from delivering a killing blow before they’re saved by a surprise attack from The Kingdom and Hilltop. At that moment, Negan’s rule about not harming kids seems to have been suspended.
Walking Dead: Dead City’s Retcon Is Part Of A Bigger Negan Change
The Walking Dead: Dead City on the whole is working hard to redeem Negan as much as possible. Past episodes have rewritten his monstrous actions as those of a man who hated committing them, but felt they were a necessary evil to protect his community. Dead City’s second episode sees him briefly relive his glory days when he executes one of The Croat’s men in a gruesomely theatrical manner to intimidate them. Even then, he shows remorse moments later when he realizes Maggie saw the whole routine.
The Saviors’ rule about not harming kids is a further attempt to reframe Negan and establish he wasn’t a total monster. However, it’s contradicted by his own actions in previous seasons, which shows that was a line he was willing to cross if need be. The Walking Dead: Dead City is actually harming Negan’s redemption by choosing this path. What made the character so compelling was charting how, in owning what a monster he used to be, he was working hard to be a good man. The Walking Dead: Dead City doesn’t need to sparkle any sugar on his past to make his redemption more palatable.
