The Walking Dead: No surprise the water made Negan sick

After being locked in a cell for close to eight years, Negan learned the hard way that he can’t go back to nature very easily in the world of The Walking Dead.

Negan quickly discovered that freedom wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be during the mid-season premiere of The Walking Dead. After discovering that his cell was unlocked, he escaped Alexandria and went on a journey of self-discovery, and along the way he drank some water and got sick.

At one point during his trip Negan stopped to have lunch when a couple of walkers caught him off guard and he dropped his supplies, including the bottled water he’d brought with him. When he continued on his journey he ended up at a stream, where he drank some water.

He became sick almost instantly.

It’s not surprising that Negan got sick. Until that point he had spent the past eight years locked in a cell with food and water brought to him three times a day. The water was likely filtered, and the food was clean. With no outside interference, his body developed a tolerance to the water he was drinking, so the introduction of water that wasn’t filtered was too much for his system. There’s a very good reason that the expression “Don’t drink the water” exists.

There’s a bigger issue to the idea that water from the stream made him sick, and that’s the idea that there’s something contaminating it. Given that at this point in the show we’re about ten years removed from the fall of civilization, the water should have returned to a very pristine state in the absence of hazardous runoff from people, cars and industrial waste. The water should be potable, unless there’s something upstream that’s causing the contamination, which in turn caused the illness.

It’s quite possible that the presence of decaying walkers in the water is what made Negan sick. The river could be part of the one where the walkers fell after Rick blew up the bridge. Though years have passed, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t incapacitated walkers mucking up the water somewhere.

If the water isn’t potable without being filtered, it also begs the question about whether fish caught in the river should be consumed. Remember that Daryl was fishing in the river back when Carol found him after the big time jump. Could the fish make people sick, too? Possibly. If the water isn’t potable, then the fish shouldn’t be eaten, either.

Of note is the location where Negan got sick during the episode. As he fell to his knees and vomited, the camera panned up to reveal that the former leader of the Saviors was actually in the clearing where he killed Abraham and Glenn. What’s more is that the clearing was empty, just like the Sanctuary and just like the Saviors.

With Alexandria and the Hilltop thriving, it’s worth wondering whether the Kingdom’s problems with supplies is somehow tied to the contaminated water. As time passes in 9B keep an eye on where water supplies are coming from and whether the communities are fishing. It could tell us a great deal.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9pm on AMC.