Last Day on Earth (The Walking Dead)

After Maggie suffers pain from pregnancy, Rick and the group urgently try to get her to the Hilltop Colony in their RV for medical attention; however, every one of the routes they take is blocked by a progressively larger number of Saviors, led by Simon (Steven Ogg), with increasingly frightening capabilities.

Concurrently, Morgan finds Carol injured from a cut on her stomach and patches her up. While Morgan goes outside to kill a walker that is making noise, Carol flees and Morgan again pursues on horseback. Roman, the Savior who survived her attack, finds Carol first, shooting her in the right arm and leg, stating that she will suffer like his friends did. Morgan shows up just in time to save her, breaking his vow by killing Roman, and encounters two men wearing armor who approach on horseback: one of them is the mysterious survivor from the barn that Morgan saved from Rick. After the strangers offer them help, Morgan agrees to get Carol medical assistance.

After nightfall, with time running out, Eugene volunteers to be bait to distract the Saviors by driving the empty RV by himself to lure them while the rest of the group carry Maggie to the Hilltop through the woods on foot. However, as the group carries a very weak Maggie on a stretcher, they end up running into the midst of a large group of Saviors, led by Simon from earlier, who were expecting and waiting for them all to arrive. The Saviors have already beaten up Eugene and captured him, along with Glenn, Michonne, Rosita, and a gravely wounded but alive, Daryl as well as the RV. The entire group is disarmed and are forced on their knees.

As the group kneels helplessly on the ground, a man with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire steps out of the group's RV. In an intimidating manner, he approaches and greets a nervous Rick, revealing himself to be Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the totalitarian leader of the Saviors. Unhappy, Negan berates Rick for killing many of his men and then goes on to explain the new world order: the group now works for him and half of their supplies now belong to him. He introduces Rick to his bat, which he calls "Lucille", and reveals that the entire set up, including the roadblocks, was simply to decide "who gets the honor" of dying as punishment for their actions. When Negan threatens to put Maggie out of her misery, Glenn lunges at him in order to defend her, but is pulled back in line by Dwight. Unable to choose a victim, Negan claims to have an idea; he starts a game of "eeny, meeny, miny, moe", pointing Lucille down the line of survivors as he recites the rhyme. He eventually lands on "it", making his choice. From the victim's point-of-view, Negan prepares to beat them, telling his men to cut out Carl's other eye and feed it to Rick should anyone move or say anything. Negan then slams Lucille down onto his victim's head. To the horror of the other survivors, Negan continues to beat the victim over and over again.

"Last Day on Earth" marks the debut of Negan portrayed by Jeffrey Dean Morgan (left) despite mixed reviews for the episode itself, Morgan received acclaim for his performance, also marks the debut of Simon, portrayed by Steven Ogg (right), a Savior and Negan's right-hand.

On November 10, 2015, it was announced that Jeffrey Dean Morgan had been cast as Negan and would make his debut in the season finale.^[1] This episode is the third in the sixth season to air in an expanded 90-minute time slot.^[2] Director Greg Nicotero confirmed that they filmed two versions of Negan's introduction – one for broadcast with toned down language and the other for the Blu-ray release, which has swearing to match his speech from the comics.^[3]