Season 10, Episode 22
- Negan is at the crossroads of his past and future when he is banished from Alexandria.
The tenth season finale, and the final episode of Season 10’s extended run.
- Adaptation Expansion: In the comics, Negan left the communities in exile for good after the Whisperer War, and never returned besides a cameo in the Grand Finale. Negan’s decision to stay in Alexandria means that from here on out, any storylines for Negan fall into this trope.
- All for Nothing: Negan sold out the group who gave him medicine only to find Lucille killed herself while he was gone. It’s later Subverted when he returns to help save them from Craven’s gang.
- Apocalyptic Log: Lucille hears a radio news broadcast covering the reanimation of people who come back as walkers, giving another peek into how the media covered the incoming apocalypse.
- Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Negan creates Lucille after discovering the actual Lucille committed suicide while he was gone.
- Bring It: Negan smiles at Maggie when he returns to Alexandria, invoking this.
- The Bus Came Back:
- Negan finds Lucille again after nearly a decade of her being missing since Season 8’s “Wrath”.
- Laura returns in the flashbacks after her death in “Stalker”.
- Call-Back:
- Carol claims the Alexandrian council has voted to banish Negan. They previously weighed his fate in “Silence the Whisperers” after his accidental murder of Margo, in which it was strongly implied they were aiming for execution.
- Negan is clearly a bit uncomfortable as he realizes he’s being led to a cabin in the woods by Carol, remembering he lured Alpha to her death the same way in “Walk With Us”.
- Carol takes Negan to live his banishment in Leah’s cabin, introduced in “Find Me”.
- Call-Forward:
- Lucille can be seen wearing a Half Moon T-shirt in one scene. Negan was surprised to learn Beta's true identity in "A Certain Doom".
- Negan tenderly tells Lucille, "You're awesome." When he first shows off Lucille (the bat) to Rick's group in "Last Day on Earth", he says, "This is Lucille, and she is awesome."
- When Negan is playing a video game with kids online, he tells one of the other players “I hope you got your shitting pants on, because you are about to shit your pants”, which he will later say to Gabriel at the end of the Season 8 premiere “Mercy”.
- Continuity Nod:
- Maggie tells Hershel that Glenn used to sing “You Are My Sunshine” to her, reminiscent of when Negan had Carl sing him the same song in Season 7’s “Sing Me A Song”, something Lori used to sing to him as well.
- Negan returns to the tree that he was defeated by Rick under at the end of the Savior War in Season 8’s “Wrath”.
- Negan remembers Season 9’s “The Obliged” when Michonne told him how nobody recovered Lucille after the Savior War.
- Negan forces Craven to kneel before him and endure a long monologue - just like he did to Rick’s group in the Season 6 finale “Last Day on Earth”.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: The bat Lucille is destroyed when Negan uses it on a walker, only for it to break apart due to being buried and worn by nearly a decade of abandonment. In the comics, it was similarly broken but after Negan used it during a fight with Beta.
- Did You Actually Believe...?: Negan’s hallucination of his past self mocks him for believing there was a chance he could ever move past perception of the nightmarish tyrant he was to the communities.
- Driven to Suicide: Lucille killed herself while Negan was on his last mission.
- Face Death with Dignity: Lucille tells Negan to stop trying to find her more medicine and just stay with her until the inevitable end.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Janine says Negan’s manchild behavior used to be cute, foreshadowing the reveal a few minutes later that she was sleeping with Negan behind Lucille’s back.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Negan was a high school gym teacher and part-time biker prior to the apocalypse.
- Goodbye, Cruel World!: Negan finds a message from Lucille on the door to their room.Lucille: Please don’t leave me like this. ❤️
- Handicapped Badass: Lucille was able to kill a walker with a headshot despite her state of cancer.
- Happily Married: Even after everything, Negan and Lucille truly did have the loving relationship Negan had always implied.
- I Choose to Stay: Negan decides to refuse his banishment from Carol and returns to Alexandria, well aware Maggie will likely come for his head.
- Mythology Gag: Lucille’s death is framed similarly to Andrea’s comic death, passing away in her bed and her lover being unable to put her down at first. Lucille’s TV death is depicted in the aftermath of the Whisperer War, just like how comic Andrea was the main casualty who perished after the war.
- "No More Holding Back" Speech: Negan gives one to a tied-up Craven, after having set his house and zombified wife on fire. It gradually becomes a villainous example, since this is the very moment Negan gave up on being a good guy."Seeing red was a bad thing then. I was a bad man... then. But, see, now, nobody's suing anybody. Nobody’s gettin' fired. Hell, nobody's keeping score. Now when I see red, it's just a question of what I am capable of. And, well, man, I hate to break it to ya. See, I am startin' to think that I am capable of damn near anything."
- Sadistic Choice: Negan is forced to choose between giving up the group who aided him out of the goodness of their hearts or doom Lucille to death. He chooses the former.
- Season Finale: The final episode of the extended Season 10, and the final season finale of the show since Season 11 is the final season.
- Shout-Out:
- Negan is introduced in his earliest (pre-apocalypse) flashback listening to "Back in Black" by AC/DC. The song is frequently used in Supernatural, where Jeffrey Dean Morgan had a major recurring role as the main characters' father — who, incidentally, was the one who got his eldest son interested in classic rock in the first place.
- The scene of Lucille finding out she has cancer is a clear reference to the scene from the pilot of Breaking Bad in which Walter finds out about his cancer.
- Spoiler Opening: Lindsley Register's name is listed in the opening credits, so it isn't much of a surprise when Laura reappears in Negan's flashbacks.
- Start of Darkness: This episode chronicles how Negan started on the path from normal guy to post-apocalyptic warlord.
- Wrecked Weapon: Lucille the bat breaks apart after one final use, due to rotting from spending nearly a decade underground.
