Spoilers for "The Walking Dead," Season 8, Episode 14 follow below.
Oh, Negan. While Rick was out making promises he did not intend to keep with unsuspecting Saviors, Negan was being yanked around by head Scavenger Jadis, wondering “what the s***” was going on. Sunday night’s episode of “The Walking Dead” saw more deals made on different sides of the war, some forgotten as soon as their formation and others not yet resolved. In the sequence between Negan and Jadis, we saw him tied to a board, subjected to snapping Walkers, and threatened with the burning of his precious Lucille, and through all that we saw a side to Negan we had not yet played witness to.
Lucille the bat
Fans of the comic series, or anyone with an insatiable curiosity and access to Google, already knew Negan’s beloved bat was named after his late wife, but it was only revealed on the show last night. The first reference to Negan’s life before the outbreak was made in season 8, episode 5, “The Big Scary U,” when he confessed his weakness to Father Gabriel. He told Gabriel about his first wife, who was sick, and when she died during the outbreak he couldn’t put her down.
We didn’t learn anything else about Negan’s wife until last night, in episode 14 “Still Gotta Mean Something.” Negan, while still tied up, managed to get a hold of a gun and a flare, and he threatened to burn Jadis’ photos, the last she has from her past life.
As she pleaded with him not to destroy them, he told her about his own last tie to the past. His wife, Lucille, got him through life, and when the world ended, his bat got him through, too. Hence, the name, and hence, the undying devotion. To viewers who did not already know why Negan, who already has a world of issues, should treat a deadly object so reverently, this is the big reveal, maybe the biggest reveal of the season, and definitely the biggest reveal of Negan’s character thus far.
Without Lucille the bat, he is all alone.
One is the loneliest number
When Jadis is about to set fire to Lucille, Negan is desperate. Unlike his usual rage-fueled response when someone (Rick) touches the bat, he showed his vulnerability and how much the loss would devastate him. This could be because he truly would be alone, should the bat become nothing more than a pile of ashes.
His people abandoned him, which he must have realized when no one came to his aid as he fought Rick in episode 12, “The Key.” Or when it was revealed that his right hand man Simon ignored his orders and slaughtered the Scavengers. Either way, he knows he isn’t as revered as he once thought, and he’s losing control.
However, he might have softened his tone for Jadis because he sees a kindred spirit in her. Like him, she’s lost her people, in a more literal way than he has. Like him, she has only one memento from what life was like before. Like him, she wants to be saved. This episode reintroduced the helicopter we first saw in episode 5, and though we thought maybe Rick, who’s prone to hallucinations, was the only one to see it, we learned this week that it is, in fact, real -- unless everyone is just crazy.
Jadis, after saving her photos, waved a flare at the lingering aircraft and yelled, “I’m here! I’m here!” That desire for inclusion is matched by Negan, as it would be by anyone who could recognize that access to that kind of machinery means safety they’d both like to possess.
Settling it
The end of the episode left us with more questions than answers. Negan’s promise to Jadis that he will “settle it,” the killing of her people, seems obvious, but is he really going to kill Simon, someone he’s trusted for so long? And what about that offer to Jadis, to follow a new path if she joined him? Will this “path” come back in later seasons? I believe we’ve seen the last of Jadis for a while.
And who did Negan pick up at the end of the episode? What surprises will he roll out? Only time will tell us -- about one week of time, to be specific.
