‘The Walking Dead’ Season 7 Spoilers: There Is A Lot More To Negan That Has Not Yet Been Seen

Season 7 of The Walking Dead is still a number of months away, but fans aren’t going to stop asking questions and looking for hints of what’s to come. The season 6 cliffhanger with Negan wielding his barbed-wire bat named Lucille at one of the survivors left everyone wondering what’s to come. Apparently, there is a lot more to Negan than any of the viewers have seen before and executive producer Greg Nicotero is excited about it.

Please let it be known that there are possible spoilers ahead for the current season and comic book of The Walking Dead. If you don’t want to know them, stop reading now.

The cliffhanger at the end of Season 6 made the Internet virtually explode in a wave of anger and frustration. AMC and the creators of The Walking Dead aren’t stupid, though, as they immediately generated so much interest, exposure, and coverage that the show got even bigger when off the air.

All the talk was about who received the wrath of Lucille.

Greg Nicotero is the executive producer, director, and makeup effects supervisor for The Walking Dead, and he recently took some time to speak with IGN about the chaos that was the Season 6 cliffhanger and break until Season 7. He let it be known that the decision to end last season as they did had plenty of reasons.

“It propels our people. It affects our people profoundly, as it does in the comic book. That changes everyone’s direction. The main thing about Season 7 is establishing that the world isn’t what everybody thinks it is, the world out there. At the end of Season 6, Rick was so confident. ‘We’re just going to knock out that outpost, we’re going to f**k these guys up before they f**k us up,’ and it ends with him going, ‘Heh, oh well, I had no idea. What I perceived as the world is not even close to what the reality of the world is,’ and Negan’s there to show him that.”

Nicotero said that Season 6 of The Walking Dead ended as it did because later this year, the show will move into “all new worlds.” He said the show’s creators wanted to end one chapter and move onto a new one.

One of the more interesting things is that he’s been reading all the fan theories and thoughts about who came face-to-face with Lucille. Nicotero said that paparazzi and set watchers may not know what they think they know, as Season 7 isn’t being filmed in order. He said that anything read online really doesn’t mean much, as they are doing things to keep the plot as secret as possible.

As for Negan? Fans certainly haven’t seen the last of him, but The Walking Dead is not on a network where they can have him act exactly as he should. Nicotero said that’s where the home release will come into play, and fans of the comic books will be happy with how the TV show’s creators wanted him to be.

“When you watch the DVD [of Season 6], we shot alternate takes [of Negan’s monologue] with him saying ‘f**k’ every other line. On the DVD, you’ll get the full [Negan].”

Negan finally making his debut on The Walking Dead is something that fans have wanted for a very long time, but he wasn’t the first villain to ever step foot on the show. A number of other bad guys have made their way into the group of survivors and against them, but what about the original villains?

The Walkers are what this series is all about, and Nicotero doesn’t want people to forget that it is actually a zombie show. While Negan is a prominent face of evil, the creators aren’t forgetting about the reason the world is the way it is in The Walking Dead.

“That’s what The Walking Dead is. It’s always important to keep the walkers relevant in the show. That’s why the gags that come up, if there’s an episode that doesn’t have a ton of walkers, there’ll be some awesome gags in it that you’ll just be blown away by. I came up with a couple this year that we’ll be shooting next week that we’ve never done before, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be cool.’ “

The Walking Dead has done everything possible to thrill viewers and make them angry at the same time, but they keep coming back for more. Negan finally showing up at the end of Season 6 should have been a sign that fans wouldn’t get much before the finale was over. As Greg Nicotero revealed, there will be much more of Negan in Season 7, but the DVD for the previous season is going to give fans a look at the villain which couldn’t air on regular television.

[Image via AMC]