Spending years in a confined space with little social interaction and no freedom to go out as much as you please is a sure way of making a person go insane. However, if said person was insane to begin with, he learns to grow quiet in solitude. Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) has spent a few years in jail since season eight and that’s mostly where Morgan’s scenes take place. Season 10 will finally take Negan out of the cell and place him in the Alexandria community with minor responsibilities.
“I was so thrilled to know this year was coming. Last year had ended up being a lot longer than anticipated,” Morgan said. “For real, all 16 episodes, all but one was spent in that jail. So, I was ready to kinda get out and stretch my legs again. But it’s nice seeing what last year did, I was given Negan some other sides, it made him a much more 3 dimensional character. We saw him defeated, and… We saw him want to die, and then we saw him have this relationship with Judith and we saw a side of him and gave him, I guess, a little bit of redemption in a lot of people’s eyes.”
In the comics, Negan is the one to kill Alpha, but things could play out differently on-screen. The TV show is known to, at times, take another direction away from the comics. “I don’t know what you’d have to not know what happens [with Negan and Alpha], so I’m aware, but I stopped reading the comics after Negan’s introduction,” Morgan said. “Just because I didn’t want to be bummed out that we didn’t shoot something. Or have it indicate too much about what I was gonna do, I like kinda being more surprised. I will go back when we’re done shooting this show and I will read everything.”
As the Negan character continues to progress, Morgan would be up to the challenge to kill Alpha. “I mean, I think I wanna do it,” Morgan added. “It would be crazy to say I don’t wanna do it. I’m good with it.”