Negan

After Rick's group raids a Saviors outpost, Negan traps them all on the road, puts them on their knees and gives a speech before choosing who will die. He kills Abraham with Lucille. When Daryl lashes out with a punch, he kills Glenn too, in front of Maggie. Then he humiliates Rick until he accepts the rules: half of everything belongs to the Saviors.

Negan takes Daryl prisoner to the Sanctuary, the factory where he lives with several wives and where his followers kneel as he passes and answer "I am Negan." He visits Alexandria like he owns it, burns rule-breakers' faces with a hot iron and spends time with Carl, who tried to kill him. By the end of S7, the communities unite against him.

The Saviors face the alliance of Alexandria, the Hilltop and the Kingdom. Negan survives sieges and ambushes and loses the support of some of his own. Simon tries to take over, and Negan kills him with his bare hands. He bets on a final victory with ammunition Eugene made, but Eugene sabotaged it, and the guns blow up in the Saviors' hands.

In one last face-off, Rick slits Negan's throat with a shard of glass. Honoring Carl's last wish, he has him saved and sentences him to life in a cell in Alexandria.

Negan spends years in a cell. He talks with Judith through the bars and, when Maggie comes to kill him, he begs for death and she walks away. He even escapes, finds the Sanctuary empty and comes back on his own. When he steps in to protect young Lydia, a fight ends with a resident dead, and he's sent back to the cell.

Carol offers him a deal: Negan escapes, joins the Whisperers and earns the trust of their leader, Alpha. At the right moment he cuts her throat and delivers her head to Carol. A bonus episode tells his past: he was a high school gym teacher, lost his wife, Lucille, to cancer and named the bat after her.

Maggie, back with her son, Hershel, won't accept Negan walking free. Even so, the two have to work together on a mission against the Reapers, and the distrust almost turns deadly. Negan leaves the group, meets Annie and tries to live a quieter life.

In the final fight against the Commonwealth's government, he fights beside everyone again. Near the end, he finally apologizes to Maggie for what he did to Glenn. He turns up married to Annie, who is pregnant.

Years later, the Croat, a former Savior, kidnaps Hershel and takes him to Manhattan. Maggie seeks out Negan, who is hiding with a girl named Ginny and being hunted by Marshal Perlie Armstrong of the New Babylon Federation. The two cross an island full of walkers and armed gangs.

In the end, Maggie tricks Negan: she hands him over to the Croat in exchange for her son. The mysterious Dama, who gives the Croat his orders, wants Negan to lead her people.

A year later, Negan is coerced into leading the Dama's people after she brings his wife, Annie, and their son to the city as leverage. He sends them away. Maggie returns to Manhattan with the New Babylon Federation, and Hershel, under the Dama's influence, betrays the operation. In the end, Negan, Maggie and Perlie vow to rebuild together.

Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard created Negan for issue #100 of the comic in 2012, and his entrance became one of the book's best-remembered scenes. His origin was told in the comic Here's Negan in 2016, later adapted into the episode of the same name. Jeffrey Dean Morgan was cast in 2015.