Pride and Prejudice to his wife Lucille (Hilarie Burton Morton) and hates it.
Photo: AMC
As
The Walking Dead’s only villain-turned-protagonist, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) has always been one of the series’ richest characters. Giving us a look at his life before he led the Saviors, before he wielded his baseball bat, and even before the zombie apocalypse could have made him even more fascinating. Instead,
The Walking Dead manages to tell Negan’s origin story without really telling us anything at all.
Advertisement
Here’s what we knew about Negan’s life, primarily thanks to his confession to Gabriel back in season six: he had a wife named Lucille (played here by Hilarie Burton Morgan, Jeffrey’s real-life spouse) who died of cancer after the dead rose from the grave. After she passed, he named his trademark baseball bat after her, which was a strange homage that nevertheless revealed his true affection, given that Negan freaked out when he thought the bat was lost.
Alerts
Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his wife Lucille (Hilarie Burton, Morgan’s real-life wife), seen before she was a baseball bat.
Image: AMC
The Walking Dead’s 10th season, which will premiere February 28, will include a look back at big bad-turned-mistrusted-anti-hero Negan and his life before the zombie apocalypse. Now, the show has released a small okay, very small glimpse of what’s in store.
Advertisement
Really, the clip (via Uproxx) is trying to imply Negan has done a heel turn yet again and has Maggie trapped somewhere, where the former Savior is threatening to murder her. Given that Maggie still wants Negan dead for killing her beloved Glenn, they’re definitely headed for a conflict, and Negan could turn the tables on her only to then start smarmily gloating he’s going to kill her, being his former
The new comedy
Chad has been a long time coming. Created by and starring Nasim Pedrad, the show has been in development since 2016, and has moved networks from Fox to TBS. Pedrad not only written and directed the show; she also takes on the challenge of playing the eponymous 14-year-old boy who legally changed his name from Ferydoon to Chad Amani to sound more American. He only has one goal as high school starts: to befriend the crowd he perceives as “cool.” It’s a familiar narrative, but Chad, who is Iranian American, has to additionally navigate his cultural identity along with his teenage experiences, although he often chooses not to do so. Chad puts his Iranian heritage on the back burner as a way to fit in, even though he’s the only one who views it as a hindrance. After some unsteady initial episodes, the series manages to explore some heartfelt narratives through its extremely uncomfortable humor.
It’s been almost exactly five years to the day that Jeffrey Dean Morgan made his first appearance as Negan on
The Walking Dead. For all the criticism that those early episodes with Negan and the Saviors subsequently received, there was always something compelling about Morgan’s portrayal of the character. Even with all the cringeworthy “pants-shitting” talk they regularly saddled him with, the actor managed to take the malevolent villain and imbue him with charisma, charm, and menace in equal measure, making it all too easy to understand why he was the kind of person others would follow without question. He wasn’t relatable, but he made sense; the heightened camp elements of Morgan’s performance were part and parcel of the character, a way to cleverly depict the fact that
Alerts
Crop of the cover to Skywalker: A Family at War by Kristin Baver. Artwork by Matt Ferguson.
Image: DK Publishing
Original trilogy, prequel trilogy, sequel trilogy, it’s all just one story: the Skywalker Saga. From the very beginning of Star Wars, George Lucas’ tale from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away has been almost singularly about one family whose fate would change the universe. Now, with that story complete, Lucasfilm has decided it should be retold in a different and intriguing way. It’s called
Star Wars Skywalker A Family at War by Kristin Baver, it’s out this Tuesday, and io9 has an exclusive excerpt for you to read.