An alternate reality episode of The Walking Dead: Dead City is on the way on Sunday, Aug. 30, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan loves it, but there’s one little complaint that he has, and it has to do with a baseball bat.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Morgan, who has played Negan for a decade, portrays the iconic villain in a different light in the episode. Morgan revealed that there’s one scene where Negan gives some big monologue in a batting cage — a nod to his love of barbed baseball bats in the main show — and while filming, he hit every ball that was shot at him while doing the monologue. But the final cut showed none of it.
“What you don’t see there is I hit every f---ing ball that was pitched at me! I never missed! It pissed me off because I had this huge speech and I couldn’t miss. I was hitting every f---ing ball hard…I remember being really mad when I saw the cut of that, he recalls. ‘I’m like, You can’t tell that I’m hitting everything!’ That was the only thing that upset me about the episode.”
Say it ain’t so! In this new alt universe, I don’t think Negan is a gym teacher, judging by how he and Maggie meet in the trailer. But that’s still a shame. I would have loved to see Morgan use the baseball bat the way it’s supposed to be used.
Honestly, though, that’s a pretty tame thing to not like, since The Walking Dead universe is taking a bit of a risk with an alternate reality episode. It’s something that’s never been done before, and while characters have spoken about how they might have been in a past life or before the world went to hell, actually seeing it is one thing.
Morgan also said that this new version of him was a fun experience and that he enjoyed playing him, especially because it was such a different vibe.
“After doing this show for so long, I feel like we’ve done everything at least once that we can do on the show. And here comes this idea of doing this alternate reality that we’d never done before. I thought it was a stroke of brilliance, especially for Maggie and Negan in particular.”
The two characters have really been through the wringer throughout the course of the franchise. Not only were they basically enemies to each other in The Walking Dead (for good reason, after Glenn’s gruesome demise by Negan), but they’ve somehow managed to become allies after all this time — even if certain moments between them have angered the fans.
Heck, they’ve gotten so chummy that some people have thought about Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan as a couple — even if I completely don’t agree with it.
But it is funny that even in some alternate universe, Negan still enjoys baseball and still says some wild stuff—which is what Morgan said is great about this episode, despite how different it is. The characters are still the same:
“I called it our Hallmark episode. It reminded me of a Christmas movie. Except for the fact that f---ing Negan is still Negan in this alternate life. He’s still that guy, and he’s finding trouble wherever he goes.”
Another major plot point in this alternate episode is that Maggie’s sister, Beth (Emily Kinney), is returning.
In this world, she’s chasing her dream of becoming a singer. In the mainline series, Beth was shot in the head, and her story came to an abrupt ending, but now we’re going to be seeing her in this completely new take. I wonder if she’ll interact with Morgan in any way. That would make for some interesting scenes.
I think at first it might be a little jarring for fans to watch something like this where there are no walkers or any disturbing deaths or anything at all. But after all this time, I’m actually on Morgan’s side. I think it’s a nice change of pace, and after the drama that was the latest episode of Dead City, with that insane ending (no spoilers here), I think we need a bit of a break.
The upcoming alternate episode airs this Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026, on AMC+.
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