Glenn’s death changed everything in The Walking Dead, for better and for worse. On one hand, Steven Yeun’s exit from the show ushered in a new era featuring Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s iconic Negan performance and a wider move toward larger-scale storylines. On the other, transitioning Glenn’s death from comic books to live-action wasn’t entirely without issues, and triggered a paradigm shift after which The Walking Dead would never quite be the same.
Needless to say, Glenn’s ghost is still haunting The Walking Dead some 10 years later, and especially in The Walking Dead: Dead City. The Maggie and Negan spinoff’s first two seasons orbited entirely around Maggie’s inability to move on from Glenn’s demise and her resolve to have revenge on Negan, while also highlighting Negan’s own feelings on the situation through his relationship with Glenn and Maggie’s son, Hershel. Between that central trio, Glenn has never been far from the conversation in Dead City.
Even with Glenn still so prominent, however, Dead City‘s season 3 premiere contains the most overt connection yet, quite literally reenacting the circumstances of Glenn’s death with different cast members in each role. The episode introduces Renata and her brother, Luis, two survivors from a small hospital-based community that was, until recently, under the Dama’s purview.
Renata and Luis make their Dead City debuts while on a mission to obtain one of the Croat’s methane tanks, but season 3 quickly incorporates a four-month flashback as a means of explaining the beef between these siblings and the Croat, who was running a protection racket on the Dama’s behalf at that time. After the hospital group failed to meet their obligations, the Croat paid them a visit, and modeled his punishment after how Negan dealt with Rick Grimes and pals back in The Walking Dead season 6’s finale.
Just like Negan, the Croat declared that a community member needed to die to make the others fall in line, and he even referenced Negan as an inspiration out loud at this point. Like his bat-wielding mentor, the Croat opted to claim two lives rather than one, relying on the weight of shock and awe to convey his message. Then, in the flashback’s biggest parallel, the Croat copied Glenn’s execution almost beat for beat. He picked out a father-to-be and killed him in front of the entire group, pregnant partner included, making extra effort to ensure the man’s end was slow and painful.
The expectant mother (our new Maggie) screamed in the background as her Glenn bled out helplessly. The other community members remained frozen in fear, all while the Croat recycled Negan’s “Eeny Meeny Miny Moe” rhyme to pick out a fresh victim.
By the time Glenn met his end, the Croat had already been ejected from Negan’s Sanctuary, but the bloody performance had obviously become the Saviors’ tried and tested method for ensuring compliance from rival communities.
The Croat Also Repeats Negan’s Biggest Mistake
The lesson Negan passed onto the Croat was that killing the right person at the right time could bring an entire enemy group under control. Clearly, that tactic proved successful for both men on numerous occasions.
But Negan learned the hard way that killing the wrong person at the wrong time could have devastating consequences for him. In The Walking Dead, Negan discovered that a well-liked father-to-be was, in fact, not the right person to kill, and Glenn’s death led directly to the Saviors’ downfall as Rick Grimes waged war against his friend’s murderer.
The Croat didn’t hang around long enough to witness that lesson, and it’s fascinating to see him making the same mistake. After picking out a father-to-be for execution in front of his friends and family four months previously, The Walking Dead: Dead City season 3 finds the Croat confronted by the family members of the deceased, now determined to squeeze him for information before they leave him to suffer an undignified death. Having learned the lesson sooner, and thus become a little wiser, Negan can’t help but look a little smug as he watches history repeat itself with the Croat.
- Release Date
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June 15, 2023
- Showrunner
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Eli Jorne, Seth Hoffman
