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We’ve spent five episodes of The Walking Dead with Negan now, and the picture we are getting of the series’ supervillain is not that different from the one we had when he was introduced in the sixth season premiere. He is who he is, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of layers to the character. He’s an asshole. He’s a bully. He’s pedantic. He treats everyone like a child that he can control and manipulate. He’s quick to punish, and he’s all about the rules. He also has a very bad sense of humor.
Those characteristics sound a lot like an extreme version of a stereotypical high-school gym teacher, which makes perfect sense. That’s exactly what Negan did for a living before the zombies arrived and his ego shot straight to his head.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan has been signed on for at least two seasons, so it’s likely that his backstory will be filled in next year, so this information from the graphic novels should be considered a spoiler for future episodes. However, it also helps to inform the character we are seeing on screen now: Where does a guy like that come from? Why does he behave as he does? Why is is such a stickler for the rules?
Knowing that he used to be a gym teacher helps to explain some of that behavior. Pre-apocalypse, Negan wasn’t any less of an asshole when he was known as Coach Negan. Even then he swore profusely at his students, despite receiving numerous complaints from their parents. His wife also tried to convince Coach Negan to stop using so much profanity, but he refused because — in his mind — it made him look cool to his students.
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That might help to explain why Negan didn’t immediately kill Carl after Carl took out two of his men and tried to kill Negan. Negan still wants to be seen as cool by the kids, even if that kid is the son of an enemy. That’s why Negan showed Carl around, why he tried to impress Carl with his harem of wives, and why he trotted Carl out to watch Negan iron a man’s face. He wants Carl to look up to him, to be impressed by him, to think he is cool.
The gym-teacher background also explains why Negan likes to “bust balls.” Imagine how he ran a gym class. I’m sure he gave the weak or out-of-shape students plenty of grief. I’m sure he made his stronger students part of his inner circle, without ever letting them forget that he was in control. I’m sure he also tortured those who failed to abide by the rules. As a gym teacher, he probably made them run laps or do push ups. As the leader of an apocalyptic gang, he locks them in cells and makes them listen to terrible pop music on repeat or he burns half their face off with a hot iron. Same approach. Different methods.
For Negan, it’s all about controlling the classroom through fear and commanding their respect. It’s about taunting his minions and punishing those who step out of line. Even his baseball bat is a callback to his coaching days, and having other people hold it for him is a power move akin to making his students hold his clipboard in gym class, singling that person out at his bitch.
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Indeed, the most telling moment of the episode was when he made Carl remove the bandage from around his eye. When Carl cried, for one brief moment, Negan showed compassion for him.
“Damn. Holy hell kid,” Negan said to Carl. “It’s easy to forget that you’re just a kid. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings or anything. I was just screwing around.”
For a fleeting few seconds, Negan was a real person, instead of a cartoon villain. He has a soft sport for Carl, I suspect, because Carl reminds him of the kids in high school he used to coach. Interestingly, in the graphic novels, Negan is also known for his strong counseling abilities, and while we haven’t seen any of that in the series yet, it almost became evident in that moment with Carl.
Negan, however, suffered a double whammy before the outbreak. One of the first zombies that Negan ever saw was his wife, who died of cancer and turned in the hospital room (in fact, the kid who had to put down Negan’s wife for him after she turned was around the same age as Carl). The second traumatic event came in losing everything else understood while the zombies took over the world. The psychological damage of that ratcheted his gym-teacher qualities up to 11 and ripped the knob off, and as people under extreme stress are wont to do, he’s trying to control the situation around him. Now he’s a horror movie version of the worst gym teacher ever.
Pay close enough attention, however, and it’s not too hard to imagine him as a P.E. teacher again.