‘The Walking Dead’ season 7 midseason finale theory: Could Negan do the unthinkable?

Did Sunday night’s “Walking Dead” episode really need to run for ninety minutes? We feel like that’s a subject that we could write a full article all about in itself, but at the same time we’re aware that this is not what we’re here to do. Instead, we’re going to do our best to discuss where we left off at the end of Sunday’s new episode, and how this sets the stage for what could be one of the craziest midseason finales that we’ve seen on this show — and when you look at the back catalogue of these from over the years, we do genuinely think that this is saying something severe.

We left off with Negan effectively holding Rick’s family hostage, with both Carl and Judith stuck waiting with him for Andrew Lincoln’s character to get back. We know that this is a guy who’s down for causing all sorts of chaos, and for finding new and creative ways to break people down emotionally. We’ve already seen what happened when Negan decided to remove Glenn and Abraham from the equation, so you now have to ponder over this: What about Carl or Judith?

Killing Judith specifically is the question we ponder over in the article’s title. Seemingly, the TV version of the character doesn’t seem all to interested in killing women — he hasn’t been invested in finding Oceanside, and he didn’t kill Maggie when he had the chance. The same may go for young children; yet, if he wants to destroy Rick completely, removing this child (or having a crony do it for him) would be one of the primary ways to do that. Even if Rick knows the child isn’t his, his monologue to Michonne explained precisely how much he cares for her.

As for killing Carl, we actually would see this being a move that Negan would make, even though he’d hate doing it in the process. This is a guy who seems to see a certain part of himself in Carl; he admires his toughness and his resolve for someone so young. We know that he’s kept Carl alive for a reason, and it’s not entirely clear what that is.

If Negan leaves everyone alive in Alexandria during the midseason finale next week, let’s just say we’d be surprised. For now, we’re just fairly confident that the likes of Carl and Judith are the two who are hanging over the guillotine the most.

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