Season 3 of The Walking Dead: Dead City (2023) has stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan back in the spotlight. In perhaps one of the strangest TV team-ups, the archenemies turned reluctant partners continue the franchise’s undead adventures in New York City. To no one’s surprise, Negan remains just as complicated and morally gray as ever, prompting fans to revisit his infamous past in the flagship series, The Walking Dead (2010).
Spoiler: It’s brutal, bloody, and filled with carnage. While Negan has killed countless people over the years, some deaths stand out more than others. Here are Negan’s most brutal Walking Dead kills, ranked by how disturbing they are. And, hey, I know a lot of us are Team Negan now, but if you want to be mad at him all over again, keep scrolling to number one.
8. David
Listen, David (Martinez) doesn’t rank last on this list because he’s a minor TWD character; David ranks last on this list because no one shed any tears when Negan took this scumbag out. While a lot of Savior members were no angels, David took it up a notch when his power complex led to him sexually assaulting Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green). Thankfully, Negan put a stop to it, and if you ask me, gave him a rather quick, merciful death.
After David blabbered an apology, Negan stabbed David through the neck with a pretty chunky knife and whispered, “You know what? I do not accept your apology.” Dark humor aside, David’s death is an excellent early example of Negan’s complexity as a character. As some might say, he is a villain, but he isn’t a monster—although Negan’s many wives might say otherwise.
7. Alpha
Hip hip hooray! Like David, the death of Alpha (Samantha Morton) surely came with some cheers. As Season 10’s big bad, Alpha took out too many of our favorite survivors and sent poor Carol (Melissa McBride) spiraling into a dangerous, chaotic quest for revenge. That said, Alpha is by far my favorite Walking Dead villain, and Samantha Morton played her with such a quiet menace that she genuinely frightened me at times. Still, she had to go, and Negan was just the man for the job.
Negan’s infiltration into Alpha’s circle of trust and subsequent backstabbing (well, technically, throat slitting) truly kickstarted his controversial redemption arc. And while I’d argue Alpha’s death might’ve had one of the biggest repercussions on the plot, it ranks at the bottom because it was relatively tame on the brutality scale. Negan even kisses her on the cheek.
6. Dr. Emmett Carson
Man, let’s take a moment to pour one out for Dr. Emmett Carson (Tim Parati), a man whose niceness resulted in him meeting the inside of a furnace. Cruel? You bet, but if you’re going to be mad at anyone, be mad at Dwight (Austin Amelio), who framed Emmett for letting his wife, Sherry (Christine Evangelista), escape the Sanctuary.
After a false confession from Emmett to hopefully save his life, Negan tossed Emmett into the furnace, whole and alive. It’s about as horrific as it sounds, although thankfully we didn’t see much after the initial toss. However, Emmett’s pained screams earn him the sixth spot on this list, especially considering the doctor’s innocence.
5. Simon
Brutality-wise, some could argue Simon (Steven Ogg) should rank lower (Negan strangled him). However, I justified fifth place because the complicated relationship between Negan and Simon gives Simon’s death some umph. Previously, Simon operated as Negan’s right-hand man, and Negan genuinely seemed to trust him. This makes Negan killing him pretty brutal—at least from Negan’s perspective.
Negan had to face the one person he thought he could trust, a person who didn’t hesitate to start their stand-off with a cheap shot after orchestrating a plan to kill and usurp Negan. If you’re Team Sympathetic Negan, then Simon’s death carries weight. If you still think Negan is scum, even after Dead City, then just pretend I put Simon underneath Dr. Emmett because, boy, did I struggle with where to rank him.
4. Spencer Monroe
Spencer (Austin Nichols) wasn’t always bad, but after he started blaming Rick for the death of his family, the needle moved from protagonist to antagonist. During his “I hate Rick Grimes” campaign, Spencer made a fateful mistake by approaching Negan and asking him to kill Rick so he could step into power.
Negan didn’t like Spencer’s cowardice, though, whereas he respected Rick’s hustle, despite the disadvantage he was in with the Saviors taking over Alexandria. So, when Negan asked Spencer why he didn’t just kill Rick himself, Negan answered his own question by saying, “I have a guess. It’s because you got no guts.” Negan followed it up by disemboweling Spencer and shouting, “They were inside you all the time! You did have guts! I’ve never been so wrong in my whole life!”
3. Brandon
Hmm. How to best describe Brandon (Blaine Kern III)? How about a fanatical Negan groupie who decided that the way to win Negan’s heart was by killing an innocent mother and her child? As such, Negan had his own “look at the flowers” moment of sorts by bashing in Brandon’s head with a rock.
Was it for the best? You’re darn right. However, the scene was pretty horrific. As the next two entries on this list show, Negan has a thing for head bashing, and Brandon’s extended kill scene proved just as squishy and gruesome. At the same time, Brandon’s death also seemed cathartic for Negan in a weird way. With every bash, he killed that ruthless Savior part of him that he’d come to regret by Season 10.
2. Abraham
I don’t care who you are. If you’re a Walking Dead fan in any capacity, then you remember watching Season 7, Episode 1, “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be.” Man, even writing about this episode gives me the absolute shivers. Abraham’s (Michael Cudlitz) death, which involved a brutal bludgeoning with Negan’s barbed wire-wrapped bat Lucille, was hard to watch, and the reactions from the supporting cast truly sold the sheer horror of this scene.
Perhaps the worst part? The fact that Abraham was killed by Negan like this was a surprise. The Walking Dead comics had Abraham die from an arrow through the eye, rather than by meeting the bad end of Negan’s bat. Of course, the subsequent death of Glenn (Steven Yeun) is perhaps most notorious, but Abraham went out right alongside him.
1. Glenn
Was there anybody else that would get the number one spot on a Negan kill list? Let’s be real. Glenn’s death was so infamous and traumatizing that the show lost a reported 5 million viewers after the episode (via Yahoo). In some ways, that makes it one of the most effective episodes of TV ever. “But at what cost?” I scream into the sky.
Truthfully, I couldn’t rewatch Glenn’s death (or Abraham’s) when writing this article, but I didn’t need to. Glenn’s final moments are seared in the grooves of my brain. The fact he managed to mutter, “I’ll find you,” to Maggie with part of his brain exposed… ugh… I’m still devastated all these years later. If you fell off of The Walking Dead after this, I get it. However, I still say it’s worth getting back into, even just to experience Season 10. You’ll always be scarred from Glenn— that’s just how this show works.