The Walking Dead: Three weaknesses that might doom Negan in All-Out War
#3 Negan is terrible at gathering intelligence about the other communities
One of the most puzzling aspects of Negan’s rule is how little he cares about gathering intelligence. His system is close to a “colonial” one: he has dependencies on which he claims sovereignty, and then asks them to send him a share of their produce. Still, his system has one major weakness: he doesn’t leave any of his lieutenants behind to supervise his “colonies”and generally doesn’t really try to know what they are up to.
Bullying and no supervision: a recipe for disaster
Negan simply sends a few armed Saviours there from time to time, to collect the food, and occasionally terrorize the population. It is not only rather silly, but totally counter-productive: if he really wanted to have a good working relationship with these people, he should, one, have them supervised, and two, make sure he isn’t hated by all of them. Instead, the strategy of only occasionally sending bullies is the best way to make sure his “workers” plot behind his back as soon as his envoys have left.
Negan cannot locate people…
The season 7 finale showed just how little Negan knew about what was going on in his colonies. He didn’t know Maggie was still alive. He tried to find Daryl but was unable to, even though Daryl was not particularly careful… And that’s an understatement: Daryl visited all three communities (the Hilltop, the Kingdom, and Alexandria) after his breakout, without bothering to hide his face or even who he was. One spy in any of the three communities would have been enough to spot him.
… nor does he know what the other communities are up to
Negan had no clue that the Kingdom was about to rise against him, and didn’t know about Ezekiel having a tiger, either – which shows he basically didn’t know anything about Ezekiel at all, since this is not a detail people are likely to overlook if they’ve ever seen Ezekiel, or even only heard of him. As for the women of Oceanside and their arsenal, he is still unaware of their existence and doesn’t seem to worry about them – even though he has to know they are still alive and all have reasons to hate him.
Does Negan even use spies?
There was one brief moment in season 7 of The Walking Dead when it seemed like Negan actually had a network of spies: when he told Sasha that a “little bird” had informed him of Rick’s intention to instigate a rebellion. However, we eventually found out the rather disappointing truth: it was one of the Scavengers who had stumbled upon Negan by chance and decided he would make a better ally than Rick. In short, this was no strategic prowess on Negan’s part; it was pure luck.