Remember When Negan Had a Wife and Kid? Neither Does 'The Walking Dead'

While it was impossible to imagine that one of the biggest villains in The Walking Dead could ever settle down with a quaint family, the reformed Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) proved us wrong by the end of the flagship show. His tragic backstory centering around his ailing wife further convinced us he wouldn't find love again, but then he met Annie (Medina Senghore). We never got to see their meet-cute or even wedding, as they appeared as a married couple in Season 11 after Negan departed from the main group. By the end of the series, Annie is pregnant and Negan decides to permanently leave the settlement to start their new life together.

Being Negan's only relationship, it was strange that Annie and their son Joshua never appeared in Negan's spin-off with Maggie (Lauren Cohan), The Walking Dead: Dead City. Instead, Maggie finds Negan with a mysterious girl called Ginny (Mahina Napoleon), as if his wife and son randomly disappeared from the face of the planet. While he does give us a brief explanation of their whereabouts, Dead City Season 2 has been increasingly making references to Annie and Joshua, and, unfortunately, they haven't been making the impact the show seemingly intends. How are we supposed to feel something around characters we barely remember?

What Happened to Negan's Family in 'The Walking Dead'?

In Dead City Season 1, Negan succinctly addresses the absence of his wife and son through a conversation with Maggie. He tells her that after leaving the core group at the end of The Walking Dead, he and Annie had settled down in a cabin outside the limits of New Babylon, the Western-inspired capital of a federation of communities where Maggie found Negan. There, their son Joshua was born, and they lived a peaceful life for many years. However, one night, Annie didn't return home from a day of trading and when Negan found her, she was bloody and bruised from being robbed and assaulted. With his innately vicious streak, Negan hunted down the five robbers and killed them, which led to a life on the run from New Babylon marshals that was hard on Annie. As such, Negan shipped them off on a wagon cart to Missouri, promising to follow but never did.

Negan's decision not to follow them and thus allow them to live without watching over their shoulders for marshals was a strange one. As countless seasons of The Walking Dead have proved, there are always dangers lurking around every corner in the apocalypse, so just because Negan "saved" them from New Babylon law didn't mean they were necessarily safe. While Annie is a commendable fighter and survivor, Negan would surely prefer to be around to protect his son; somewhat abandoning them simply doesn't follow the internal logic of the show and his character. That being said, this explanation was presumably to leave the door open for Annie and Joshua's potential return to the series, and to make a spin-off of just Maggie and Negan make sense to begin with.

Even if we do forgive Dead City for the bizarre explanation, it doesn't make the mentions of Annie and Joshua any less jarring, mainly because we barely remember who they are. Annie only appeared in nine episodes of the final season of the flagship show, which is certainly not enough time for her to have made a memorable impact on audiences. She's one of those characters that you would only vaguely recall if someone said "Negan's wife" rather than her name, and even then, the moniker would conjure up Negan's first wife in the mind's eye initially. As such, when Negan talks about her and Joshua (a character we have never met) in Dead City Season 1, we can only sympathize with Negan's pain, not his loss. The names and characters of Annie and Joshua just don't make an impact.

'The Walking Dead: Dead City' Pointlessly Mentions Negan's Family

While the lack of impact of Annie and Joshua's characters and references seems like a moot point in the series, it actually partially undermines the hold the Dama (Lisa Emery) has on Negan in Dead City Season 2. In order to puppeteer the retired villain, one of the Dama's threats is against Negan's family, where she claims they ended up in Tennessee instead of Missouri and that she was bringing them to Manhattan. Throughout the season, including the latest installment of Season 2, Episode 5, the Dama tauntingly hangs mere mentions of his family in front of his face, silencing any signs of rebellion or even just plain cockiness in Negan.

While the Dama's method is effective within the show, it lacks authenticity and credibility with the viewers, mainly because we aren't invested in Annie and Joshua. These are the only times we can recognize that they are important to Negan, especially as he painfully confesses this to Maggie in their Episode 4 reunion. But that is not enough. Outside Negan's exposition in Season 1 and the Dama's veiled threats, Annie and Joshua are never mentioned, and it is difficult to understand their significance to Negan (apart from the arbitrary value assigned to their relation to him) when you don't know anything about the character. These references also end up disrupting the momentum and immersive quality of the show, as more often than not, we have to take a couple of beats scrambling to remember who they are in the first place. As such, we may recognize the implications of the Dama's threats, but we cannot feel the weight of it ourselves.

Dead City Season 2 should have seen the Dama simply rely on her threat to Hershel (Logan Kim), a character in a complex position with ambiguous loyalties and a nuanced, guilt-ridden relationship with Negan. Even if Annie and Joshua enter at this point of the season, three episodes are not enough time to cultivate the same gravity and stakes that are already associated with Negan's relationship with Hershel. We are simply already so invested in Negan and Hershel's dynamics, or even that with Maggie or Ginny, that it doesn't seem possible for Annie and Joshua to catch up. If they ever do join the cast of Dead City, whether that be this season or future ones, the mother-son duo definitely have their work cut out for them to justify why simply invoking their names caused such distress to a former untouchable villain.