WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Walking Dead Season 11, Episode 13, "Warlords," which aired Sunday, March 20 on AMC.
Many Walking Dead characters come and go, but some always find their way back home. In Season 11, Episode 13, "Warlords," the iconic and smart-mouthed Negan bumps into Aaron and Gabriel's group. While that once would've been cause for concern, it seems like his time away did him a lot of good.
It hasn't seemed that long since Negan was fighting alongside Maggie and her group in Meridian, but it's actually been a little over two months since the Reapers were defeated. Negan saw himself out, believing it was better for him to have the last word rather than Maggie finally getting her revenge for Glenn's death. There was some speculation as to whether Negan would ever return, but there were plenty of obvious reasons why he was going to resurface eventually.
There was no formal goodbye to Negan after Season 11, Episode 9, "No Other Way," suggesting that there was still some room for the character to have a story in the rest of the season. Negan didn't have a big presence in the comics' Commonwealth storyline, and it seemed at first like The Walking Dead was trying to replicate that. But with a star like Jeffrey Dean Morgan captivating the screen, and Negan's "love-to-hate-him" trait, there's no letting go of him. In fact, Morgan is set to star in his own spin-off alongside Lauren Cohan in 2023, which was announced a week before "Warlords" airing on AMC, so any chance of hiding his reappearance and high survival rate was blown.
So what's Negan been up to? "Warlords" doesn't get into the specificity of Negan's ventures while everyone else is enjoying ice cream and lavish hierarchical masquerade balls, but he's definitely not living the glamorous life. The episode takes a step away from the yearning Commonwealth resistance once again to focus on a smaller mission. Aaron and Gabriel are assigned as emissaries on behalf of the Commonwealth to meet with a new community called Riverbend. Unbeknownst to them, the group is targeted by wild card Lance Hornsby because of a missing weapons shipment. Lance sends ex-CIA agent and former assassin Toby Carlson to dispose of them.
Negan comes in towards the end of the episode, revealing he is part of Riverbend and sent a young Commonwealth bystander to Maggie for help. Despite his claim that he was going out to be on his own, he's allied with yet another group. It's unclear how long exactly he's been with Riverbend, but they seem to trust him immediately. Seeing their ruthless tactics to protect their home, it wouldn't even matter if these people knew about Negan's past as a tyrannical leader who smashes heads in for fun. That's not to say that they're all cruel survivors; the remaining members hiding in the building seem like the bunch that Negan's stuck around with, as he's somehow become a kinder and more level-headed person.
Gabriel may be taking solace in the fact that Negan is helping him right now, but that won't dictate what Maggie will think. Negan is still her husband's murderer, and he's far past redemption to her. But Maggie is one of the more capable survivors of the series, having denied the Commonwealth's plan to rebuild Hilltop just on her gut instinct and continuing to thrive as her own leader. Negan's short absence from The Walking Dead is the push the character needed to make him actually tolerable... and possibly more trustworthy in Maggie's eyes.
To see Negan make his return, watch The Walking Dead Season 11, Episode 13 on AMC+. New episodes of The Walking Dead premiere every Sunday at 9 pm ET on AMC, and are available to stream a week early on AMC+.