‘The Walking Dead’ Season 6 return for Bloodbath premiere preview: Who’s Negan?

'The Walking Dead' Season 6 return for Bloodbath premiere 2016 images

Peek at The Walking Dead Season 6 Part Two Premiere

It’s easy to get caught up in the hype of The Walking Dead‘s return for the second half of season six. Feel free to wait in front of the TV from now until 9 pm Sunday on AMC if you’re super anxious to see what happens.

I was fortunate enough to get a four-minute preview of the premiere, which eventually and, unfortunately, led me to a spoiler I wish I could un-see. Too anxious!

For a refresher on the mid season finale, here’s what you may have forgotten.

A couple of episodes before the finale, Alexandria was attacked by the lawless group known as the Wolves. The attack was thwarted as Carol led the troops left inside the walls. Yet part of the wall fell in the following days as the damaged tower finally collapsed.

Too bad we had that unfortunate drunken murder scene at the last town hall meeting. Reg may have seen this collapse coming and prevented it somehow.

There is a cure for fire ants but not for the zombies that crawled into the city like a colony of these tiny biting insects. The situation was dire with Deanna being bitten and choosing to pop a cap in her own brain after giving some good advice to both Rick and Michonne.

Glenn and Enid are looking on as all this happens, and of course, they will enter the fray if Team Grimes’ Guts Camo fails to work.

Well, Glenn will help for sure. Enid is just as likely to wander off alone and listen to someTool.

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We should find out rather quickly if Alexandria can be saved within a couple of episodes of the season six winter return.

The extended preview for the return of The Walking Dead focuses on one main character. Negan!

I’ve heard a lot about this villain over the past year as I listened to a few WD podcasts. More on him in a moment.

The preview doesn’t show the new super bad guy. We’ll have to wait on that of course.

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What we do see is Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham in a heap of shit. Negan’s soldiers have them hemmed up on the highway and take their guns pretty easily. This gang looks formidable. This isn’t the first time they’ve carjacked a set of survivors.

The guy in charge of this little unit tells the three members of Rick’s crew that they will have to “eat shit” repeatedly if they are to survive this little encounter. His comment “If you’ve gonna have to eat shit, it’s best not to nibble,” does make you crack a smirk, though.

The leader of the pack says, “There’s always more to take,” when Daryl says that the sidearms was all they had worth stealing.

the walking dead returns 2016

“More to take,” involves much more than just what’s in that tanker truck.

Big burly Abraham isn’t accustomed to a shit diet so he bucks a bit and may end up with a bullet sandwich for just asking the question, “Who’s Negan.”

Sasha tries to talk sense into Negan’s lieutenant, but that only puts her in danger of getting capped as well.

The preview ends leaving us to wonder if Abe or Sasha will even see the fifth minute of the premiere. This rough group is a serious one and appears to be sticklers for all their rules.

Since I’m not being held at gunpoint on a lonely highway in Georgia, I’ll pose the question, “Who’s Negan.”

Here are a couple of tidbits that I’ve heard but may or may not be true:

– The guy uses a baseball bat wrapped in barb wire as his main weapon.

– Dude has a pet tiger. While impractical in a zombie apocalypse, it’s pretty bad-ass. This may not even be true since I had to stop fact checking after the previously mentioned spoilage.

– According to many, Negan is the best “Big Bad” in the entire comic series so far.

After a little sniffing around I did uncover some facts about Negan.

– He does the unthinkable by……..not gonna spoil you. I’m not a bat wielding maniac like this man.

– Negan was salesman of the month on a regular basis at the car dealership that employed him back when cars were more valuable than guns.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan will be playing the role of Negan. Morgan has appeared on Grey’s Anatomy and SuperNatural. He also played The Comedian in one of my favorite films, Watchmen.

That’s as big a set up as I can do for the return of WD as it’s about 24 hours away. I can’t look ahead any further!

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Too much risk involved in deeper dives into upcoming characters on a TV show that follows a comic series that’s still a bit ahead of the show.

Stay tuned for a bloody recap of Sunday night’s premiere.

the walking dead season 6 2016 return

Now here’s some spoilers so be warned on who’s going to die in tonight’s bloodbath. This breaks down the show and the comic version of The Walking Dead.

Who’s on the walker menu?

Ron and Sam

This one gets a little confusing, because Show Sam is actually Comic Ron, and Show Ron doesn’t actually exist at all. It’s Comic Ron who starts doing the crying while in the zombie masses, and Show Sam doing it on the show. And he’s the one character I will almost guarantee dies tonight. Not just because he’s a twerp and annoying, but because the whole crux of the scene revolves around him taking the first bite.

Ron on the other hand (Show Ron) I’m not as sure about. Since he technically doesn’t exist in the comics, it’s easy to see him dying as well in the chaos, but I’d honestly rather see him live. He’s made a pretty great foil for Carl so far (where Carl is now treating him like Glenn treated Nicholas, and we all know how that worked out) and Enid’s return could create a new dynamic for that relationship. He seems pretty vulnerable, but I hope he lives.

Jessie

So what exactly happens in the comic is that Ron (Show Sam) cries, Ron gets swarmed, and Jessie, still holding his hand, also gets swarmed and bitten. But the problem becomes that she’s holding onto Carl, and Rick has to make the call to literally chop her hand off and leave her to get eaten by walkers in order to save Carl.

Now, there are a few signs that this may be exactly how things play out tonight. Jessie is indeed holding Sam and Carl’s hands as they wade out into the walkers, and Rick does have his giant chopping machete on him. With that said, I almost hope that Jessie makes it out the night alive, and becomes a stand-in for another dead character on the show, Andrea.

As comic readers will know, unlike the show, which killed Andrea seasons ago in the Governor storyline, Comic Andrea is a much different character, and rises to become one of the premiere badasses of the group. Shortly after this attack on Alexandria, she and Rick start up a relationship. It is not a hook-up, and by the time the comic reaches present day, Rick and Andrea are still together, with Carl calling her “mom.” To cut out that character completely seems odd.

So, my theory is that Jessie could possibly take Andrea’s place in that role. I think Show Jessie has been a lot better developed that Comic Jessie, and I think she has the potential to slide into Comic Andrea’s shoes. Yes, the show may want that “shocking moment” with her and Sam and Carl and Rick, but I think there is another path forward with her if the showrunners wanted to resurrect the long-term Andrea plotline.

Carl

Alright, so Carl obviously isn’t going to die, but the big question has always been whether or not The Walking Dead will actually let this scene play out to its comic conclusion, where a stray bullet hits Carl in the eye, permanently disfiguring him (but not killing him). Right now, we do have a Wolf running around with a loaded gun, which could be the set-up for that (in the comic, it’s Deanna’s character who accidentally shoots Carl), or AMC could forgo it completely. I have not crept through behind-the-scenes set shots, so I genuinely don’t know if this will happen or not.

I’ve said before that this is the most significant moment for Carl’s character in the comics, and I don’t think that the show should take it away from him, either for gore concerns, or all the extra make-up and effects Chandler Riggs will now require in the future. It’s a major turning point for his character, and arguably when he starts becoming the co-lead of the series alongside Rick. I thought it was going to happen in the finale last year, and I’m still pulling for it to happen tonight, but I’m just not sure if they’ll pull the trigger. Literally.

Michonne

Oh please. Outside of Rick, I honestly don’t think there’s another more safe character on the show than Michonne. She’s in the zombie guts group like she was in the comics, but she’s going to be completely fine.

Father Gabriel

But Father Gabriel? I’m not so sure. He was not in this little conga line in the comic, and his appearance in the show was downright strange, considering how little he’s been onscreen lately. I have a hunch that the show is going to end up sacrificing him, because A) the actor (Seth Gilliam) probably doesn’t enjoy hanging around for one minute of screen time every three episodes, B) despite remaining alive, Father Gabriel never ends up doing anything particularly noteworthy in the comics, and C) the show is going to have to start slimming down its cast somehow, as they are adding a ton of new characters to the show. Not just Negan and his crew, but Jesus and all the rest of the Hilltop folks as well. I think Gabriel might finally meet his end tonight, a divergence from the comics, but not one many would complain about, I’d imagine.

Morgan

Morgan is an interesting case, because in the comics, he is supposed to die during this assault. He takes a bite, and doesn’t survive. But Comic Morgan and Show Morgan are pretty different. Show Morgan has only recently returned to the cast and is locked in a physical and philosophical struggle with the kill-happy Carol. In the comic, Morgan ends up romantically involved with Michonne, which hasn’t even been hinted at yet on the show, but still may be in the cards. So while he’s supposed to die during this sequence, I think the show values him more than the comic did, so we’ll see him sticking around a while longer, if not permanently.

Abraham/Sasha/Daryl

This is the trio currently staring down Negan’s crew on the road. I have a hunch they’re all going to make it out alive, but anything’s possible. The way this is supposed to play out in the comic is that when The Saviors demand their stuff, they say “hell no” and murder as many of the bandits as possible, and one gets away to report back to Negan what happened. This sets up a future conflict between the two groups though this scene is supposed to take place after the introduction of the Hilltop Colony.

However, given that this is our first official introduction to Negan’s group, I could see them killing either Sasha (who isn’t in the comics) or Abraham (who ends up being killed by Negan’s crew later on). Abraham is not supposed to die for a while yet, but Daryl (not in the comics) has more or less assumed Comic Abraham’s role as Rick’s enforcer lieutenant. I have a creeping suspicion that Abraham may not make it home though perhaps they can’t pack in too many deaths into one episode. I guess we’ll see.

Obviously that isn’t the entire cast, but I’m not really worried about anyone else (Glenn, Maggie, Enid, Morgan, Carol, Denise, Aaron, Heath) at the moment. That time will come, but for now, it seems like only the people I’ve listed above are at the highest risk of not surviving the night.

How many will we lose? Check back here after the episode where I’ll update this post and talk about what went down.