What if Negan had killed ________?

The Walking Dead promised us carnage in the Season 7 premiere, and carnage was served a la mode. But what if there had been a slight tweak to Negan’s batting order?

SPOILER ALERT for the Season 7 premiere!!

After a long six month wait, we finally know which members of our TWD family have departed for greener pastures.  In a lot of ways, the suspense was a tad anticlimactic because we knew deaths were coming. It was just a matter of who was going to die.

Now we know that Negan killed Abraham and Glenn. Abraham died in typical Abraham fashion, managing to give Negan a “suck my nuts” before Lucille finished him off. Glenn also got a few garbled words out to Maggie before succumbing to his injuries.

There’s no question that what Negan did and how he did it was jarring. It was graphic and disturbing and sick and hard to watch. But what if he had killed a woman? What if his victim had been Michonne, Rosita, Sasha, or Maggie? How would that have changed the dynamic of the scene?

It’s an interesting question to consider. While Negan’s actions galvanized the group’s sense of family, as we saw at the end of the season premiere, what would have happened if Rosita and Maggie had died in place of Abraham and Glenn? I’m not sure that the men in the group would have sat through it. I don’t think Daryl, Glenn, Abraham, Aaron, or Rick would have gone down without a fight. I think it had to go down the way it did because there was simply no other way to do it.

Imagine the public outrage if Negan had killed a woman. We are taught that women and children are sacred. (Just consider the old “women and children first” thing) That would have crossed so many lines that the show could have stumbled a bit in the court of public opinion. And even though Negan doesn’t know Maggie is pregnant, killing a pregnant woman would have been shocking. I think that as much as The Walking Dead enjoys shocking people, there are certain lines that just can’t be crossed. While Walker-on-human violence is hard to watch but acceptable, watching a man kill a woman in cold blood, with a baseball bat, would have been too much.

In a lot of ways, it was a very smart move on Negan’s part to not kill a woman. Had he done so, there’s not much he’d be able to do, threats or not, to keep the men from fighting back. That level of protection is instinctive, and while Negan didn’t know if anyone was paired up, it’s not something he could risk. In his mind, it would seem that he doesn’t feel threatened by the women. He’s more concerned about the men becoming submissive to his will, and that’s why it’s so important that he breaks Rick’s will so that no one else tries to fight back.

However, Negan has underestimated the women in this group. They’ve all lost someone. Maggie has lost Glenn and her entire family, Rosita lost Abraham, and Sasha lost Abraham, Bob and Tyreese. These women aren’t going to sit back and allow this to happen.

Related Story: The Walking Dead recap: Season 7 premiere

Though deaths are never easy to watch on television shows, especially not on The Walking Dead, it would seem that there are some things that just shouldn’t happen. Having Negan kill women the way he killed Abraham and Glenn would have been a departure that might have alienated too many fans.