If you thought Negan was poorly handled in the last season of The Walking Dead, you’re in good company, as his portrayer, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, has come out to express disappointment over how the character was written, saying he would have much rather seen him “walk off into the sunset.”
Speaking on Kelly Ripa’s podcast (via Entertainment Weekly), Morgan said, “You know, I don’t know that he would’ve gotten married again, and they had Negan get married at the end of The Walking Dead…We never saw the story of how he met this person and why he would’ve married her, which always kind of bummed me out, because I think he was so in love with his wife, Lucille, and it had made such a production out of the whole Lucille of it all.” Lucille, of course, wasn’t just the name of Negan’s first wife, but his trusty baseball bat. “Having him show up with a wife without telling the story of why and how was always, like, a problem — an issue I had.”
Morgan added that The Walking Dead storyline with Negan remarrying – something that was created strictly for the show – came about due to an overcrowded cast. “You know, that’s what happens when you’re doing a show with 30 main characters. You’re not able to service each character as well as you may want to.” He added that he hopes the next entry in The Walking Dead franchise, Dead City, makes time to address the issue.
The Walking Dead: Dead City finds “Maggie [Lauren Cohan] and Negan traveling into a post-apocalyptic Manhattan long ago cut off from the mainland. The crumbling city is filled with the dead and denizens who have made New York City their own world full of anarchy, danger, beauty, and terror.” Dead City is the fifth installment in The Walking Dead franchise but the first since the original to make Negan a character. Morgan has, however, voiced Negan on Robot Chicken and in the video game Tekken 7.
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