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Who Is The Croat From ‘The Walking Dead: Dead City'? Everything We Know About His Past With Negan
Who Is The Croat From ‘The Walking Dead: Dead City'? Everything We Know About His Past With Negan

Yahoo

time12-05-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Yahoo

Who Is The Croat From ‘The Walking Dead: Dead City'? Everything We Know About His Past With Negan

The Walking Dead: Dead City not only marked the return of Negan Smith (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Maggie Rhee (Lauren Cohan), but it also gave way to a chilling new villain with a key connection to Negan's past. In Touch rounded up everything fans need to know about The Croat (Željko Ivanek) ahead of season 2, which is set to premiere on AMC on May 4, 2025. The Croat is the primary antagonist of TWD: Dead City season 1 and the terrifying leader of a group of survivors known as the Burazi in Manhattan, New York. He is known for his sadistic leadership style and his proclivity for torturing his victims. Prior to the beginning of season 1, he kidnaps Maggie's teenage son, Hershel (Logan Kim), in an attempt to obtain information about Negan and potentially reunite with him. Željko is a Slovenian-American actor who has been working professionally in television and film since the early 1980s. Over the years, he's collected a wide array of guest roles in hit shows, such as The X-Files, Murder, She Wrote, Frasier, LOST, ER, 24, The West Wing, True Blood and more. He's had major roles in Heroes, Madam Secretary, Oz and The Walking Dead: Dead City. Fans may also remember him from his work in film, including Argo, Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Last Duel. Very little is known about The Croat's history prior to the outbreak. His nickname – as his real name has not been given in the show – and his use of Croatian implies he is from Croatia. He also shares that he once had a family, a wife named Mia and three children – Nika, Hana and Filip. After the outbreak, he left them hiding in an abandoned post office while he went out to search for food, but when he returned, he discovered his family had all been killed and eaten by another group of survivors. It's revealed in the first episode of season 1 that The Croat is a former member of Negan's disbanded group of survivors known as the Saviors. In a behind-the-scenes look into TWD: Dead City that aired on AMC+, Željko explained that it wasn't until The Croat met Negan that he began 'rebuilding' himself following the loss of his family. He said it was also when his character gained the 'determination to never be vulnerable in that way' again. While with the Saviors, The Croat utterly idolized Negan. He served as an interrogator for the group, but he fell out of Negan's good graces when he directly disobeyed his order and tortured and murdered a young girl he believed to be a scout from another community. 'Let's just say there were a lot of psychos in my crew back then, but he always stood out as being an exceptionally insane son of a bitch,' Negan recalls to Maggie in the episode 'Old Acquaintances.' Disgusted and realizing that he could never be trusted, Negan tried to shoot The Croat back then, but he missed and ended up shooting off his ear as he ran away. Despite their complicated past, The Croat appeared truly excited to see Negan again years later and even seems to look at him as a father figure, despite being older than him. 'The Croat's a complicated character, because, on one hand, he's looking for safe harbor,' Željko shared in AMC+'s behind-the-scenes interview, noting that The Croat wants to 'find a way to no longer be vulnerable in the world.' The change he undergoes after meeting Negan 'becomes a strength,' Željko added. 'But it also becomes what makes him scary.' Warning: Spoilers ahead for season 2! Trailers and sneak peeks reveal The Croat seemingly setting up Negan as a big bad leadership figure again – this time with the Burazi. In one clip, he tells Negan that he brought him a gift and gives him a new version of Lucille, a barbed-wire covered bat and Negan's famed weapon of choice in the flagship series. Longtime viewers recall the original Lucille was cracked and then burned in season 10 of TWD, making her return an especially exciting development for fans.

"I'm going to my father's home country," Sunita Williams plans trip to India
"I'm going to my father's home country," Sunita Williams plans trip to India

Times of Oman

time01-04-2025

  • Science
  • Times of Oman

"I'm going to my father's home country," Sunita Williams plans trip to India

Washington DC: NASA Astronaut Sunita Williams said she plans to visit India soon, and meet with ISRO's team during her visit. Williams said during NASA's SpaceX Crew-9 Post-Flight News Conference that she found India to be 'amazing' each time her spacecraft passed by the Himalayas during her extended stay of nine months in space. "I hope and I think for sure I'm going to be going back to my father's home country and visiting with people and getting excited about the Indian astronauts who's going up on the ISRO mission coming up," she said. Sunita Williams' mother, Ursuline Bonnie Pandya (nee Zalokar), is of Slovenian-American descent, while her father, Deepak Pandya, is from Gujarat. Williams said she would love to share her experience up in the space with ISRO, and said it was great how India put its foot forward in the space sector, being a fellow democracy. "[It's] pretty awesome- they'll have a hometown hero there of their own that will be able to talk about how wonderful the International Space Station is from his perspective," she said. "I hope I can meet up at some point in time and we can share our experiences with as many people in India as possible because it's a great country, another wonderful democracy that's trying to put its foot in the space countries and I would love to be part of that and help them along," she added. When asked if she planned to take her crew along in her impending trip to India, she responded in the affirmative and jested, saying the crew would be primed with spicy food. "Absolutely! You might stick out a little bit but that's okay- we we'll get you all primed with some spicy food we'll be good," she said. Williams said that she could see India's geographical formation, when the landmass collided to form Himalayas and as a ripple effect, India was formed. "India is amazing. Every time we went over the Himalayas- we got some incredible pictures of the Himalayas- so just amazing. Like I've described it before just like this ripple that happened. Obviously when the plates collided and then as it flows down into India. It's many, many colors," she said. Williams talked about India's diversity visible from the space, from the Himalayas, to a different culture from the East to the fishing fleet on the West. "I think when you come from the East, going into like Gujarat and Mumbai- the fishing fleet that's off the coast there gives you a little bit of a beacon that here we come! All throughout India," she said. Williams said the country looked like a network of lights, with major cities being the brightest, and waning down towards smaller cities. "I think the impression I had was it was just like this network of Lights from the bigger cities going down through the smaller cities. [It was] just incredible to look at night, as well as during the day. Highlighted of course by the Himalayas which is just incredible as a forefront going down into India," she said. NASA Crew-9 astronauts Sunita Williams, Nick Hague, Butch Wilmore, and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov breathed earthly air for the first time in over nine months on March 19 after the successful splashdown of SpaceX's Dragon capsule. Delays caused by issues with Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, which surfaced during a test flight piloted by Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams last summer, led to the astronaut duo remaining in space for nine months instead of a week, CNN reported. At that time, ISRO expressed its desire to collaborate with Williams in future space missions.

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