it wasn’t fully satisfied with my first attempt at this, but part two has inspired me a little more, so let’s try again: time to finalise my cobra kai verse. i haven’t been able to stop thinking abt it since the epiphany came to me, so. here we go. this does heavily tie negan into the current plot and characters, but please know i never expect anyone who writes those characters to follow it as their canon. i am happy to amend, change, start from scratch, etc.
he will remain a winchester because that’s my main take on negan as a character and i don’t want to step away from that element. this puts him in his late sixties in a modern-set verse like cobra kai.
negan is conscripted into the us army one year after his brother, john, willingly enlisted with the marines. it isn’t something he would’ve ever chosen to do, but as a barely grown hot mess going in all the wrong directions, being drafted at least kept him out of prison and that was something. it’s not as if he really got a choice anyway!
his conscription results in him serving alongside kreese and silver, training under captain turner’s command.
somehow finding his place in the army, negan continued to serve, eventually working up to the very respectable rank of lieutenant colonel. he is, after all, a natural-born leader. at some point, he meets and marries a woman named lucille.
in 2002, negan is home on non-active duty. he and lucille have chosen to spend their anniversary at their favourite bar. it was their favourite bar because it had their favourite jukebox. it was their favourite jukebox because it had their favourite song; you are so beautiful by joe cocker. unfortunately, a drunk asshole keeps ruining the moment by being loud. lucille politely asks him to keep it down and he, in return, chooses poorly. now negan’s gotta get up! the night ends in the two men brawling except it becomes less of a brawl and more negan almost beating him to death. he then takes a dollar out the man’s wallet and plays their song until the cops show.
unfortunately for negan, he is court martialled and, without much trial, dishonorably discharged despite his decades of service. the family also successfully sue. negan loses everything, including his benefits and his reputation. he becomes unhireable, but also finds himself unable to apply for any form of government funding.
lucille’s friend, janine, takes pity on the situation and secures negan a job as a basketball coach at the highschool she works at. he fucking hates it for the most part. the only semblance of enjoyment he finds is when he learns their karate team need a sensei and steps in.
the situation puts a strain on his marriage and negan, to his shame, starts an affair with janine.
lucille is diagnosed. negan ends his affair immediately and promises to be a better husband. lucille forgives him. unfortunately, because of his dishonourable discharge, they struggle. he no longer has any health benefits to offer and they’re unable to apply for a loan due to the discharge blocking him from government funding of any kind. they start to fall into debt in lucille’s name and negan, in a desperate bid to spare them more, learns to administer her treatment himself, taking care of her. lucille later dies.
flash forward to more recent events. negan appears for the first time ( besides flashbacks ) in episode 2 of season five amongst the new cobra kai sensei line - up. i somewhat interpret this from … negan originally joining another survivor group, under someone else’s command and slowly picking apart his own agenda from the inside.
negan appears throughout season five. so far, my vision is: he participates in burning down mike barnes’ store / he attends the charity auction and though he doesn’t approach daniel directly, he has great fun in his front row seat & probably attempts to sweet talk amanda. part to get further under daniel’s skin, part because man is negan. / i like to think he knew about tory leaving kreese’s clue for daniel, but said nothing. like i said, picking apart his own agenda! / present as a witness for the topanga karate takeover / listens intently to any & all discussions about the seikai taikai / present at terry’s house during the big fight, though disappears amongst the chaos.
at some point during episode 8, gunther braun mentions in passing how extreme the sekai taikai tournament can be. they recall a competition six years ago that saw a particularly brutal dojo, saviors, disqualified during try - outs for an illegal method that put someone in hospital for five months. it’s a minor detail that’s relatively "hmm"’d over, but otherwise, not given much thought.
negan’s final scene is him meeting kreese outside the prison when he escapes, having known & assisted in the plan.
negan isn’t seen in earlier parts of season six. it is implied his role in the story is over / he’s moved on. i imagine kreese only speaks of him as having been a pawn in the game. never really that important in the grand scheme.
however, the saviors are mentioned again when miyagi-do are googling information on the sekai taikai to find out more and learn that another dojo has been forced to exit the competition after their two senseis were attacked by an unknown assailant with a baseball bat. in a decision that’s proved controversial, previously disgraced dojo "the saviors" are being given a second chance to return to the tournament as their replacements after their sensei made an impassioned plea ( read as: he threatened a bunch of people ) to not punish their new students for the old students’ mistakes.
drumroll to the finale of part one or possibly the opening of part two. either works. as all the dojos are lining up to be revealed, including the return of cobra kai, the saviors make themselves known with sensei winchester at the helm. the dojo was stemmed from his job at the school all those years ago, finding an outlet for all his rage by returning to karate and generally being unhinged abt it. y’know, the cobra kai way. they were relatively unknown, until their disqualification, but negan remained unnamed in most publications regarding this as it focused more on the students injured. his agenda is revealed, in which he saw terry’s invite to help expand cobra kai as an opportunity to rebirth his own dojo, which had been struggling since. he used his time with cobra kai & visiting kreese to learn more about them, as well as the tournament, managing to play both sides as they were so focused on their own war with one another. he used the information he gathered ( as well as his trusted baseball bat ) to earn them a spot.
i also think it would be fun if he potentially poached a couple of cobra kai students who left after the s5 finale.
tldr: another insane old man enters the karate war.
