Oh Negan. Before the time jump, he had already been in the Alexandria prison cell for a year and a half. When we get back to him six years later, he's still right there, languishing. He's formed a friendship with Judith, the young Grimes coming to him for help with her maths homework (which should seriously not still be a thing after the apocalypse). While the friendship between the two is similar to the one between Carl and Negan in the books, Kang promises we're in for some interesting scenes in the future.
"We all internally [in the writers' room] love the relationship between Negan and Carl in the comic book," she told THR. "This gave us an opportunity to tell a very different sort of story, because Judith is a different kind of child than Carl. It's really fun to put those two together."
Kang also noted that this is a different story for Negan since "we're dealing with a different kind of passage of time than we saw in the comics." We're seeing a Negan who has been imprisoned for six years versus two, and who has developed complex relationships with his captors.