Who we think Negan’s victim will be on ‘The Walking Dead’

The last few months have been torture for fans of The Walking Dead. Season six ended on a dramatic cliffhanger as new character Negan (Jeffery Dean Morgan) asserted his dominance by brutally battering a fan favourite to death off camera. As the battering happened off screen, we’ve all been in the dark about who the intended victim was. That all changes tonight (tomorrow in the UK) as the show-runners have promised we’ll learn which character met a gruesome end. The rumour-mill has been in overdrive and everyone has a theory of the identity of the deceased. We’ve held out for a while now, but feel it’s time to share our prediction of who it is.

In the comics Negan made his appearance in issue #100 and made his entrance by butchering Glenn. One could assume then that the show would follow suit, but then where would the fun in that be? Another firm favourite candidate on the internet is Abraham, but again we’re drawn to saying no as he just doesn’t feel like a beloved enough character. That’s not to say that folks don’t like him, they do, it’s just that he’s a relatively new recruit and might not pack as powerful a punch. We doubt it’ll be Daryl, the show would lose too many viewers if the internet memes of ‘if Daryl dies, we riot’ are to be believed. Our bet is instead on Maggie.

It pains us to write those words, but we can’t stop thinking that she’s the one that will die. The more we learn, the more we can’t shake that her demise may be inevitable. Here are our reasons…

1 – Firstly, if they aren’t going to kill Glenn, the next best thing would be killing someone close to Glenn. Who is closer to him than his wife? Negan is seeking to make an impression so he wants to take out someone important to the group. Thanks to Glenn’s outburst when Maggie is threatened by Negan in the season 6 finale, he knows that she is valuable and that her death will cause a lot of anguish for at least one member of the team.

2 – Secondly, stories have broken that Negan will kill two people. Most people have gone into meltdown trying to figure out who those two people might be. But would the show really slaughter two big name characters? We don’t think they would, not this early in a season at least. We think that this story was slipped to make you panic and to throw you off of the scent, whilst still telling the truth. Maggie is currently pregnant, meaning that technically she counts as two people.

3 – The fact that she is pregnant also adds weight to her being the one to go. The show has already had one zombie apocalypse baby – Judith. How on Earth would Maggie giving birth top Lori’s? Plus there’s only so many nappies to go around, and two infants would make the group even more vulnerable than they already are. Granted, it’s still early days in the pregnancy and a lot could go wrong, but we feel that this would be the most devastating story out of all of those options.

4 – Late last season Maggie got a haircut, a nice choppy pixie cut. Many fans panicked that she had been killed off until they saw it was part of her character on the show. In the comics Maggie has a similar haircut and most people relaxed thinking that this new style would mean she’ll be around for a while. But could that all just be a massive double bluff?

5 – New York Comic Con released a first-look scene from the season premiere. The sequence clearly takes place post kill, and whilst we only see Negan and Rick, the right side of Rick’s face is covered in blood. This is almost certainly blood splatter from the unlucky recipient of Lucille. Abraham, Daryl, Glenn, and Michonne are all on Rick’s right, but directly next to him on the right is… Maggie.

6 – Also, during the New York Comic Con panel, Lauren Cohan who plays Maggie, broke down in tears. She explained the tears away as her being overwhelmed at the fan support and dedication to the show. It’s a valid reason, though we can’t help but feel that the tears came for another reason. Our theory being that she was indeed overwhelmed, but because she realised that this was the last time she would be in front of these fans in this capacity with her character alive. This moment could have easily been the moment that the penny dropped for her that her time on the show was really over…

7 – Finally, Negan is being lauded as the worst thing that Rick and his team have every encountered. Given that so far they’ve fought with cannibals, The Wolves and The Governor, Negan has his work cut out for him. The last great bad was The Governor and he chopped off poor Hershel’s head, just how does one top that? How about killing a sick pregnant woman in front of her husband? We can’t think of any better way to set someone up as being the absolute worst.

Of course we might be completely wrong, and given how much we love Maggie, we really hope we are. Whatever way it goes, there’ll no doubt be tears and tantrums all over the internet. We’ll soon find out the answer though when the show returns to the US tonight and the UK tomorrow.