The Walking Dead: Negan needs to kill baby Judith for Rick to lead again

Negan will meet baby Judith soon. Will he kill her or is she the last hope of the show having a happy ending ...?

THEY WON’T KILL JUDITH

NEGAN can’t kill Judith and, even more, he won’t kill Judith.

People refer to a TV show as “jumping the shark” when it goes too far and becomes silly, in reference to when The Fonz from Happy Days literally jumped over a shark.

Well, forget about that if Negan kills Judith, it will become “bashing the baby’s head in”.

Yes, Judith died in the comics but she was killed accidentally by The Governor’s men when the Woodbury Army attacked the prison and shot both Lori and Judith as they tried to escape.

This is a death of a whole different order.

Seriously, after the fan backlash to Glenn and Abraham’s bloody demise (remember Glenn’s popped eyeball, anyone?), will viewers be able to swallow watching Negan use a wire-encrusted baseball bat on a toddler?

Rick and Judith. She can’t die!

Even if they decide to shoot her (or whatever killing method they prefer), it won’t have the desired effect of getting Rick to fight Negan.

Remember what happened to The Claimers when they threatened to rape and kill Carl? Rick tore the leader’s throat out with his teeth and then sliced the would-be rapist into little pieces.

Kill Judith and Rick won’t turn into the inspirational leader that can unite The Hilltop, The Kingdom and Alexandria into an alliance to defeat Negan.

Instead he’ll turn into a one-man berserker, who will try to rip Negan’s throat out (and probably die in a hail of bullets).

What Rick is going through is all about turning him from that arrogant, violent leader who terrified Alexandria and nearly killed one of Ezekiel’s knights into someone who can bring three groups together to stop Negan’s rampage.

Driving him mad with grief won’t do that.

Don’t forget, Carl is about to go rogue on him and try and take on Negan in a solo mission. he has to show Carl a different way. He almost lost Carl back at the prison, when Carl shot down that unarmed kid in the beanie.

Rick nearly lost Carl at the prison.

Only through care and love can Rick become the leader he truly needs to be.

We’ve seen hints of this with Michonne. She discovered the Saviours burned all their mattresses just to humiliate and hurt them. She loves Rick and has to be the one to lift him up.

Killing Judith will just drag him down and turn him into a madman.

There is also one, final, very important reason for keeping her alive.

Back in season one, the scientist at the infectious diseases centre, Edwin Jenner, told Rick that everyone had the disease and everyone would turn when dead.

Edwin Jenner sounds a lot like Edward Jenner, the man who invented the world’s first vaccine.

Fans have speculated that, while all the characters are indeed infected and can turn zombie upon death, anyone born AFTER the epidemic (ie Judith) is actually immune from it.

Judith, and the soon-to-be-born “Gleggie” baby of Glenn and Maggie, which we know from the dream sequence will be a boy, are the first immunes we will meet.

Now, while the comics can pretty much go on for ever, the TV series will have to end.

An end to the zombies and the creation of a generation that can live again in the world without turning zombie upon death? Now that would be a good ending.

They can’t kill that off.

Duncan Lay is the author of nine fantasy books, including the Australian bestsellers The Radiant Child and Bridge Of Swords, and a fan of all things zombie, fantasy, superhero and sci-fi.

THEY HAVE TO KILL JUDITH

Don’t get me wrong, I like babies. I love TV babies.

But “Baby Judith” is a toddler now, and toddlers just don’t make good TV. They’re no longer sweet cuddly little things but they’re not mature enough to deserve their own plot lines.

Just look at Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome, where writers fast-forward babies straight to teenagers because it gives them more interesting plot lines.

Rick’s Ep 4 revelation that Judith was not his own child is a big one. This opens the door to something bad happening to her.

Judith and Carol made it but nobody else did.

Suddenly the audience has less attachment to her, we’ve barely seen her since she was born anyway. I’ve said before that the Walking Dead can’t have two babies and now that Maggie has survived the Negan incident, the show looks to be heading that way.

But the “Gleggie” baby is too important to lose. After the crushing loss of Glenn, Maggie and the rest of us need that baby to hold on to. Which means we don’t need Toddler Judith, especially now that she’s the daughter of evil, back-stabbing Shane.

Will Judith turn out to be like evil Shane?

A lot of fans have been dismayed to see Rick giving in to Negan.

He will need something bigger to happen to turn him to rebellion and unite the Kingdom, Hilltop and Alexandria to fight.

Negan murdering Judith would do that. Negan himself appears to want to have children … with his “Dwight wife” shown to have had undertaken a pregnancy test and Dwight suggesting that “there’s always next month”.

If Negan is firing blanks he could be very jealous when he meets Judith. I’m not saying he’s going to bash her head in — what do you think Negan is, a monster?

I’m just saying he might accidentally kill her when he’s trying to kill someone else, which is how comic-book baby Judith died — in her mother’s arms as Lori ran from the prison.

As for the theory that Judith is the happy ending the show needs as she possibly does not have the virus — I like it, that’s a great theory but that role could actually belong to Baby Gleggie.

After all Judith died in the comic book version a long time ago. And every other child not fathered by Rick has died too.

Angela Connell is mother to two preschool-aged children, so she feels like a walking dead person most days. She is a fan of all things zombie and Game Of Thrones in book and TV form.