WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Walking Dead Season 11, Episode 14, “The Rotten Core,” which aired Sunday, March 27 on AMC.
The Walking Dead has had some pretty shocking deaths over its first few seasons. From Shane and Andrea, to Herschel and Beth, the series always managed to kill people off in dramatic and heart-wrenching fashion. Those deaths notwithstanding, most Walking Dead fans would agree that the series’ most appalling death came in the Season 7 opener. After much anticipation, Negan brutally bludgeoned Glenn (and Abraham) with his infamous baseball bat.
For better or worse, Glenn’s death transformed The Walking Dead. Rick and company had to wage all-out war with the brain-bashing tyrant and his cult-like following. To make things worse, Negan’s trademark sarcasm and lack of empathy made his character almost irredeemable, even when Rick saved his life at the of the war. Now in Season 11’s “The Rotten Core,” Negan was at it again — but he did something more shocking than killing Glenn.
Over the past few seasons, Negan has been trying to atone for his actions in various ways. He bonded with Judith, made a deal with Carol, infiltrated the Whisperers and killed Alpha. All in all, he was doing a pretty good job of making amends. In fact, Negan looked like an entirely different Negan — until Maggie showed up at the back end of Season 10.
Even though it had been over seven years, she couldn’t believe that he was out of jail and that people were okay with his apparent redemption. It’s no small wonder that she didn’t kill him on sight. Yet she showed incredible restraint when Negan called Glenn a dog to her face in Season 11A’s “Acheron: Part 1.” That comment threw all of his “changing” down the drain, and he was back to being the same old self-serving Negan. After that exchange, they maintained a working relationship until they finished decimating the Reapers, and Negan seemed to have left for good.
But viewers knew that probably wasn’t likely and weren’t surprised when he returned to the fold. During a whole mess with the Commonwealth, Aaron, Gabriel and Maggie discovered Negan’s new community in western Virginia. There they found out that he was married and that his wife was pregnant. It took being a father for him to realize that he had been wrong all along, and he did something jaw-dropping: he finally apologized for killing Glenn.
But to make things even more surprising, Negan didn’t apologize to Maggie; he apologized to Maggie and Glenn’s son Herschel. The boy had stowed away in his mother’s truck and quickly found out that Negan was the “bad man” that killed his father. He had Negan at gunpoint, and the only reason that he didn’t kill Negan was that a gunshot would have compromised their hiding place. Later in “The Rotten Core,” Negan talked to Herschel again, saying that the two of them had some unfinished business. He promised the boy that they would settle it someday — essentially giving Herschel permission to kill him.
So after all these years, it looks like Negan has actually changed. He still has a touch of the dramatic, though, because actually apologizing for killing Glenn was a completely unexpected development for his character. Of course, that shock was tempered by the fact that Maggie and Negan have to make up at some point to make way for their New-York-based spinoff… but it was still a moment that seemed beyond reach for viewers and Season 11 finally served it up.
To see more Maggie, Herschel and Negan interactions, tune into The Walking Dead Season 11. New episodes air Sundays at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and are available to stream early on AMC+.
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