Jeffrey Dean Morgan who plays Negan
I watched the episode yesterday. I think it was better than the previous episode I reviewed, which was episode 18 about Daryl and Carol.
In this episode, Negan is banished from Alexandria despite his important role in defeating the Whisperers because those who lost their loved ones by Negan's hand are unable to forgive him. Negan is prepared a house to live in some distance away from Alexandria.
This episode shows a bit of the backstory of Negan. Negan and his wife Lucille are shown cooped up in their own house where Negan treats her sick wife continuing her chemotherapy according the instructions left by her doctors. Their life consists of Negan going on supply runs while Lucille waits for him. Lucille's chemotherapy is not quite done, yet, when their fridge where they keep the medicine runs out of power and the medicine is ruined. Negan is forced to go looking for a group of doctors with a good stock of medical supplies he's heard about leaving Lucille behind.
A flashback takes the viewer as far as seven months before the apocalypse when Negan's wife Lucille, in her mid to late thirties at the time, receives her cancer diagnosis. Negan is shown as a bit of an irresponsible manchild. He gets fired from a position as a high school gym teacher after severely beating up a man who attacks him in a bar. Lucille seems like the responsible adult of the childless couple. Negan gets caught having cheated on Lucille around the same time. The two reconcile post apocalypse because Negan regrets and feels ashamed of having put Lucille through too much and takes excellent care of her.
Negan finds the doctors and they give him his medicine. Negan is given his iconic baseball bat as a gift by one of the doctors. On his way home, he's captured by a group of robbers who force him to reveal the location of of the doctors before they let him go. When Negan arrives home, he finds his wife dead in her bed in the basement where she has chained herself to a wall. Apparently, she has committed suicide because the long absence of Negan has caused her to suspect that he has abandoned her or that he has been killed.
Negan sets the house on fire and leaves. He wraps barbed wire onto the bat cut from his fence and sets off to take revenge on the robbers and to save the doctors he sees as prisoners of the robbers prior to being released by them. In the final scene of the flashback he has the leader of the robbers tied to a chair before he bashes in his skull.
I think the scriptwriters' attempt at fleshing out the character of Negan further partially succeeds. His dark triad traits are evident from the depiction of who he was prior to the apocalypse. Negan seems to have a fair bit of dark triad characteristics but he does not seem like a psychopath. He's troubled but capable of staying out of prison and seems able to become attached to other people. His wife contemplates leaving him at one point but doesn't. I have never known such people very well. I've certainly met and dealt with his kind but I've never been close to one. Despite having a normal side, Negan finds it easy to turn his conscience and shame off when the shackles of organized society and permanent relationships no longer play any role in his life. His role will be that of a recurring antagonist many years down the road.
In the end of the episode, Negan returns from exile without asking for anybody's permission, which will result in a conflict between him an certain others. I'm hoping the scriptwriters will not try to turn Negan into an enemy again. His status in the group has obviously gone up since he was released from the prison cell in one of the basements and after his crucial role in defeating the Whisperers in a war and for a good reason. Such re-use of Negan would probably cause me to stop watching the show completely. Also, it would seem unrealistic to make Negan into a good guy fully accepted by the group.
I think the best things about The Walking Dead are action, suspense, story arcs spanning several seasons, and mystery. Drama and character development are the where the show is at its weakest.