Parenting

'The Walking Dead' Finally Revealed Who Died, And Everyone's Comatose With Emotion

by Liz Henry
Updated: 
Originally Published: 
Gene Page/AMC

The Walking Dead Season 7 Premiere was last night and the entire internet is an emotional mess

After waiting five months and then twenty minutes into the Season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead, fans of the show finally know who was on the receiving end of Negan’s barbwire-tipped bat, Lucille. And now I can’t even pick myself up off the floor because I am one hot mess of emotions, so let’s go through all the feels from last night.

I’m going to keep it real for a moment: my preferred way of watching The Walking Dead is binging commercial free via Netflix. However, it also means I’m always a season behind everyone else. But commercials and binging be damned, I had to know who Negan killed — would the writers stick with the comic or veer off course? Five minutes before the premiere, you could rate my anxiety as a level Kermit:

I can’t even tell you what happened in the first twenty minutes of the show. I was so thoroughly traumatized by what followed, and just like blah, blah blah.

Then Negan began his endless and dickish game of eenie, meanie, miney, moe, and Abraham’s head was beat into a massacre of bloody mud, but not before he bravely told Negan to, “suck my nuts.” I wrongly breathed a momentary sigh of relief. While Abraham is not my most beloved character, he’s also not my least favorite. It appeared as though Glenn might be spared, and that’s what I really wanted.

With Rick’s face stained with Abraham’s blood, Negan held Lucille to Rosita’s face demanding she look at it. “My dirty girl,” he said. When Rosita doesn’t comply, Daryl breaks from the group, landing a punch to Negan’s face. It’s at this moment, that I went straight Schwarzenegger in my head to Daryl:

Having looked at the clock and realizing there was more time left in the episode than there wasn’t, I immediately sought relief by seeking out kitten gifs for self-preservation. I did this on Twitter as a public service (because I’m a giver, folks).

The deaths of Abraham and Glenn are told from Rick’s perspective as flashbacks while Rick is RV-deep in zombies with Negan prattling on about “give me my axe.”

This is a good time for me to pause so we can consider that while Negan is 1) diabolical 2) a savage murderer he is also 3) hot AF. My god, I feel so conflicted — don’t get me wrong, I am eagerly anticipating his death via Rick et al. and I will mentally cartwheel down my hallway when it happens, but the guy has scruff and dimples. AND A LEATHER JACKET. Why can’t he be a switch hitter? I mean seriously, you are too hot to be this bad.

OK. Back to the depravity.

The Season 7 Premiere is about breaking the hope of Ricktopia. Gone is a soon-to-be father and another man who felt like parenting may be an option after he’d found the right woman. Both men—and all of Rick’s group—may suffer but at their core they always come back to the hope that tomorrow brings. Negan, with his cool charisma and penchant for torture, appears to be a pragmatist: he wants this group who managed to kill two sets of his soldiers under his command.

Sensing that he hasn’t broken Rick into a “yes-man,” Negan pulls Karl from the group and gives Rick a choice: He can cut off his own son’s arm to save the rest of his group or not and everyone dies.

Which, at this point, was completely gratuitous violence but entirely effective in breaking Rick—who almost cuts off Karl’s arm until Negan stops him.

Negan and his band of merry murderers leave Rick and his gang to collect their dead and wallow in despair. Maggie wants to fight, Rick does not. The premiere ends with a vision of what might have been — everyone sitting outside eating dinner with Glenn at the head of the table with a bouncing baby on his lap.

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