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the-citrus-scale · 5 years

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Chaotic Neutrals: The Walking Dead Edition

Fandom always seems to flock to morally gray characters, or as we call them here at The Citrus Scale, chaotic neutrals. The Walking Dead, in particular, is a fandom made up pretty much only of chaotic neutrals, but some are a little more chaotic than others. In this edition of our feature, we’ll talk about my personal favorite chaotic neutral, Negan, and another character very similar to him that many might not view as a chaotic neutral, Rick Grimes. Negan and Rick both do many, many questionable things throughout the series that fans attempt to justify for the sake of not vilifying them. This is why they are both great, albeit infuriating, characters.

Analyzing any character from The Walking Dead is a little tricky. While most of them originally lived in a world that functioned like ours, they don’t live in that world anymore. Their rules are dramatically different. With Negan and Rick, there’s also another layer to worry about, and that’s the fact that they’re foils. That means that their backgrounds and character arcs mirror each other, but are just varied enough to highlight the differences between them. You also have the wrinkle of comics vs. television show. At this point, it’s really best to consider each version as separate from the other. There are too many differences in character development and plot that make it disingenuous to try to smash everything together and analyze it that way. Therefore, we’ll be talking about the television show versions of these characters today.

Ultimately, in the question of who’s better, it’s really a wash and Negan and Rick end up about the same. We know, we know. It doesn’t seem possible, right? Well, trust us, it is. Negan isn’t as bad as everybody thinks he is, and Rick isn’t as great as everybody thinks he is.

That’s largely because the two men are very similar. Both Negan and Rick had positions of authority in their original roles in the world. Negan was a teacher and Rick was a cop, and these professions show in the way they treat people. Negan views others during the apocalypse as in need of a protector and organizer, someone who will tell them exactly what they need to do to stay safe and thrive. However, much like a teacher in a classroom, Negan isn’t afraid to make his own rules. Rick sees himself as policing a societal structure that already exists, the same structure that the original world operated on. He is also very focused on actions that we would call illegal, despite the lack of that structure in the new world, whereas Negan is concerned with all actions and how they affect the whole. Rick is mostly concerned about those closest to him, particularly his family, and he has shown repeatedly that he will prioritize their safety over everything else. Negan, on the other hand, since he has no family left to care for, leans more toward the welfare of everyone, not just one person. Regardless of their methods, the big similarity between these two is that they are both working towards the same goal. They both want to reestablish order in a world that no longer has any. Their methods may be different, but they want the same result.

What fans generally take issue with, though, is that methodology, and that’s because, quite frankly, both Negan and Rick’s motivations do not excuse any and all actions. Justifying the protection of a few key people is not enough to warrant jeopardizing a larger group, but the protection of the larger group doesn’t excuse any and all actions either. It also doesn’t necessarily mean that Negan’s actions aren’t justified just because he has no family to protect. Both men, at various points, say that what they’re doing is for the greater good, but that’s not a blanket excuse that can be used to bury all sins. It’s also very easy for fans to argue that an action was justified because they know the result, but when you’re forced to consider all the ways that situation could have turned out, the justification becomes murkier. It’s also pertinent to point out that Rick’s supposed commitment to democracy, which conveniently vanishes when he doesn’t get what he wants, by the way, also does not make anything he does more excusable simply because we think we’d like his system better.

But I’m sure you want some specific examples, don’t you? Sure you do. Let’s break these two bad boys, so to speak, down.

Negan’s a little easier to tackle, so let’s take him first. Negan runs The Sanctuary in The Walking Dead. It is arguably one of the safest communities we see during the course of the series, especially considering that it’s heavily implied that Negan has been there for a long time. In addition, the people in The Sanctuary are actually equipped to deal with the apocalypse, unlike, for example, Woodbury, where most of the inhabitants lived in ignorant bliss and were unprepared for what happened when their walls came down. Rick tried to establish a permanent community like that from day one, but he never really managed. Even Carl is impressed by what Negan has built during his visit. This alone lets us see some of the good in him. However, Negan’s primary means of control are extreme psychological warfare and violence, which leaves a lot of fans with bad tastes in their mouths.

Certainly violence is justified in the new world of The Walking Dead. Pretty much every character has to use it at some point, no matter how hard they try not to. And don’t get us wrong, a lot of the people who have violence directed towards them on the show deserve it. But how much is too much? Clearly a line can be drawn. While Negan doesn’t resort to violence unless it’s the absolute last thing he can do, the fact that he starts off his interactions with other communities with threats still doesn’t sit well. Although Rick’s diplomatic approach doesn’t always have the best outcome either (Terminus, anyone?), it seems like there should be some sort of happy medium. This could lead to some less unsavory methods of running The Sanctuary for Negan as well. Maybe a little more freedom within his system would be good for everyone.

Not that Rick is running things much better, really. Let’s put his multiple failures aside for the moment and focus on a few key instances when he goes, well, a little bit off the rails. The first is when his group is staying at the prison. Rick, Michonne, and Carl come upon a lone hitchhiker who runs after their car asking for help. They drive past him not once, but twice. Later, they find his abandoned bag by the side of the road and simply take it without another thought. And okay, we get it. Other people are potentially very dangerous in this new world. But this was one guy. And they were living in a prison. A prison. With cells. That they could close and lock. They kept Merle Dixon, a known threat who was working for their enemy, in one of those cells, and they couldn’t give this random guy a chance? Just letting him die seems unnecessarily cruel. At The Sanctuary, he would have at least been given a chance, and his fate would have been up to him.

Then there’s Alexandria. When Rick and the others arrive at Alexandria, it seems like a dream, but Rick and his group quickly decide that Alexandria is being mismanaged. Despite his supposed commitment to democracy and making the world a better place, Rick simply says that if Alexandria won’t do things the way they like, they’ll just take it over, which is exactly what they do. Now, we’re not saying that Alexandria wasn’t being mismanaged, but this seems like a pretty rapid escalation, and if it was being done to Rick, he certainly wouldn’t have liked it. It was a power move, and it worked out in the end, but that still doesn’t mean that it was justified.

Which brings us to Oceanside. Yes, Simon definitely overstepped when he culled the population of Oceanside. No doubt about it. But it wasn’t Negan’s order, and he didn’t condone it, so let’s put that aside for the moment. What we do know is that Rick marches into Oceanside and demands that they comply with his demands. He wants to take away all of the defenses of a terrified group just because he wants to fight after he let Negan take away all of his defenses, and he somehow thinks this is justified because he’s fighting their former oppressor, and is therefore the ultimate hero crusading for the greater good. Um, no, Rick. Just no. When Oceanside disagreed and didn’t want to do it his way, he made them get on their knees just like Negan made him get on his and he took what he wanted. Not the greatest move, dude. For all his talk about doing the right thing, Rick is definitely willing to step into the gray when it gets him what he wants. That is not being a good leader. We’re not saying that means he doesn’t ever do anything good, but he’s not the morally upright character everyone imagines him to be.

But Rick often receives the gift of the morally upright image because of other traits that make Negan seem a little less appealing from that same perspective. Specifically, we’re talking about his wives. Negan has multiple wives, and since we don’t see a lot of them in the series, the implication we’re left with is that these women trade sex for survival. While it’s fairly obvious why this arrangement gives viewers pause, it’s also hard to really judge Negan on it when we don’t actually know how it operates. Despite the implication that the trade is sex for survival, there is never any confirmation of that. None of the wives mention that sex is part of the deal, and the only sexual contact we see between Negan and any of his wives is one kiss that was clearly more about psychology than desire. I have a personal theory about this one, in fact. I think that the wives are not about sex at all. I think they’re Negan’s loophole to help those who might not be able to support themselves within his system because they don’t have skills that are particularly useful in the apocalypse. Frankie, for example, was a masseuse. Well, that’s not really something people are going to be looking for in this new world. But Negan likes massages, so he lets Frankie trade them for survival. Okay, okay. It’s a headcanon. But it could make sense, right?

And we can’t forget where these characters are now in this discussion. Negan is obviously not devoid of morals. He cares about people, even if it’s in an abstract way, and his particularly vicious stance against rape is something any woman can honestly appreciate. And no, these things don’t excuse his character flaws and actions. But in the end, Rick doesn’t learn as much as Negan. His victory and subsequent torment of Negan simply teach him that his unilateral decision-making was right in the end. Yes, he sacrifices himself for the people he loves, and that is admirable, but Rick hasn’t changed that significantly since the beginning of the series. Negan, on the other hand, has had time for self-reflection and has come to realize his mistakes. He has already proven that he’s capable of redemption, and hopefully we’ll see some more from him before either his character arc or the television series is over.

No matter what, the moral of the story is that while both characters are flawed, you are allowed to like them, and no one is allowed to demand that you explain why or make a case for why a character is good enough to be liked. You do you, and they can do them, and no one has to get in anybody else’s way.

#the walking dead #negan #rick #grimes #rick grimes #chaotic neutral #alignment #amc #twd

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