Taking a POV shot Negan chooses his victim and begins to smash their skull to pieces with Lucille, his barbed wire bat. Unfortunately the scene does not end well, for one of the cast or the audience. Somehow this is even more sadistic than simply choosing one of them, even if he chose one at random it would be over quick, but the perverse pleasure taken at stretching things out and tormenting each and every one of them twists the nerves. The tension is ramped even higher as Negan begins to play 'eeny, meeny, miny, moe' with the group to decide which of them he's going to kill. To see our heroes reduced to terror makes it one of the most tense scenes in the shows history. Every single one of our heroes is shit scared in this scene, even Abraham who's trying to act stoic will be afraid.

Negan is so enthralling in this scene that it's impossible not to enjoy watching what he does, not from the point of view of liking his actions but just being captivated by his presence and the effect he has. He tells the group that he wants half of everything Alexandria has, and he tells them he's going to murder one of them as punishment for everything they've done. This isn't like the Governor who acts nice but has a evil agenda, this man is open and honest about being bad. Jeffrey Dean Morgan oozes menace and charm in equal measures that not many actors would be able to achieve. Now, the reveal of Negan and the speech he gives are amazing. Rick, Carl, Daryl, Michonne, Abraham, Rosita, Eugene, Maggie, Glenn, Aaron and Sasha are all assembled on their knees in front of their campervan, from which Negan emerges. With nowhere left to run and no possible way of fighting their way out of the situation they're taken prisoner, and joined with the others who were captured in last week's episode. Trying to sneak through the woods carrying Maggie on a litter the group runs straight into a gang of Saviours, and when I say gang there must have been close to fifty of them there. We know that things are going to end badly, and as the episode progresses you can see that the characters are slowly coming to the same realisation. Much like the second half of the season these developments are tense, taking it's time in prolonging the agony of watching Rick and the group struggle to try and save someone that they care about. The Saviours don't attack our group, but force them to take the route they want them to take. Over the course of the episode we see Rick and a number of his people racing to get Maggie to Hilltop and their doctor, but coming face to face with Saviour's on every route to the settlement. Unfortunately we were all right, but in more than one way. The readers of the book know Negan is bad news before he was even mentioned on screen, and thanks to the escalation we've had week after week and the war that's been going on between the residents of Alexandria and the Saviours even those unfamiliar with the source material knew that something bad was coming. 'Last Day on Earth' is the culmination of the second half of the season that's been building to the introduction of one of the most hotly anticipated comic book characters, Negan. This review WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS for the episode to be discussed, if you do not want certain plot points or story spoilt, please do not read further.

The walking dead last day on earth