The direct parallels between Negan and Joel Miller (TLOU) have become so much more apparent because I have to explain and defend both characters in such a similar fashion and people still don’t get it.
We followed Rick from his literal day 1 of the walker apocalypse. We saw him descend into various bad phases of his life where his morality and direction were both compromised by how far he let himself go, but we forgave him when he came back around, despite some truly damning acts, because we knew who he was in spite of those darker moments. Had we only been introduced to Rick later on, say when he was storming a saviour outpost while said saviours were asleep in bed and gunning them all down? We’d be less likely to like him. Had the story featured Negan as a flawed protagonist we would have vilified Rick Grimes.
The same goes for Joel, as highlighted on-screen by Abby’s perspective in The Last of Us Part II. Had we been introduced to him from the PoV of the fireflies and never seen his character journey or his shared growth with Ellie and so on? He’d be the villain of the story. That’s integral to the storytelling in TLOU too. But he isn’t a villain, he’s a human being who has a good heart and did horrible things because of who and what he cares about. We don’t hate Joel because we know Joel and many people hated Abby until we knew Abby.
Anyways, these stories using the post-apocalypse as a backdrop but ultimately to tell more human stories… Have a big emphasis on how someone can seem like this irredeemable monster but they’re capable of tenderness, love and being incredibly caring. Ultimately, even if you hate to hear it, Negan only killed Glenn and Abraham because Rick and company killed a lot of Negan’s people without it being fully provoked on an even playing field. They had families in those outposts and literal infants, had Negan done that to Rick? Rick would do far worse than kill just two of Negan’s top people.