The Walking Dead: Profiling Negan’s lieutenants

The Strong Arm

Speaking of coups, there’s one big reason Negan keeps his main man Simon around: As long as Simon is around, Simon isn’t taking over.

Simon is a major threat to the way of life at the Sanctuary. Unlike Negan, he doesn’t play by clearly defined rules. As we saw with Gregory, Simon enjoys a good game of cat and mouse. While the mouse is always the mouse, Simon can be a Garfield or he can be Jerry. He might not care at all about the mouse in one moment, and then he can chase the mouse in another.

Guys like Simon are what Negan really worries about. Negan knows that things don’t work when the Simons of the world are in charge and so he puts his biggest threat in the number one spot to give him enough of a leash so as to have some sense of autonomy, but at the end of the day the leash is still there.

When Negan showed up after the group thought he was dead, Negan knew Simon was about to sacrifice the workers. He knew some of the workers had just been shot. This didn’t make Negan happy, and when the time is right there will be consequences.