‘The Walking Dead’ Season 7: Greg Nicotero Teases ‘Amazing’ Finale

Warning: This article may contain The Walking Dead Season 7 spoilers.

The second half of The Walking Dead Season 7 doesn’t premiere until tonight, but Greg Nicotero is already excited about the season finale. In an exclusive interview with Comicbook, the executive producer and director seemed beside himself while describing the final episode of Season 7b.

“It’s an amazing script,” he said. “It was written by Scott [Gimple] and Angela [Kang] and Matt Negrete. How can you get along with those three?”

“It’s everything that you would ever want. It’s thrilling. It’s emotional. It’s powerful. Everything that’s, when our show fires on all cylinders you can’t stop it.”

Many Walking Dead Season 7 viewers feel the first half of the season was too violent and depressing, starting with the gruesome deaths of Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) and continuing with Negan’s (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) manipulation of Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and the rest of the group at every turn. Nicotero agrees but hints that the season finale will end on a very different note.

“I feel that episode hits every mark,” he says. “It was a blast to shoot. I had a ton of fun. I was a little, even surprised, because the season was hard. We started the first half of the season, it was such a downer. Watching Rick, when I was doing the [Walker Stalker Cruise] panel, I said it’s like taking Rick’s face and shoving it into a pile of s—. Expecting the audience to go along with that, it’s hard. It’s tricky emotionally, and it’s tricky for the actors, it’s tricky for our audience.”

“Knowing now where the show goes in the second half, and that it starts to do what we always do in the second half of the season, is everything starts to ramp up. You have to lay the seeds otherwise the payoff doesn’t work. The payoff for the finale is amazing.”

The Walking Dead Season 6 finale frustrated many fans by not revealing Negan’s victims at the end and stringing viewers along for months. Will the Season 7 finale also end on a big cliffhanger? Nicotero is vague.

“I’ve turned in my cut, but [showrunner] Scott [Gimple] hasn’t done his pass on it yet so nobody’s seen it,” he said. “I’ve seen it, the other executive producers have seen it, and that’s it. The actors haven’t even seen it.”

As Inquisitr previously reported, Walking Dead comic book creator Robert Kirkman already acknowledged that fans didn’t like the end of Season 6 and indicated the Season 7 finale would likely be different.

“I think everyone on The Walking Dead creative team has taken note of that, and I don’t know that I would expect a similar cliffhanger at the end of Season 7.”

He also teased that Walking Dead may have fewer major deaths coming up.

“In my opinion, there should be less death in the book now, much less, because the careless people, the scared people, the people learning how to live in this world are already dead,” Kirkman said.

“This is the cream of the crop, so to speak. So, yes, there can be a conflict like the Whisperer War, and there can be very little death. You think Michonne is going to just let herself get bitten by a zombie or stabbed by a Whisperer at this point? It wouldn’t be believable! Rick, Andrea, Carl, Jesus, Dwight, Negan, Maggie, these people are tempered steel! That’s not to say they’re invulnerable, or ‘safe’ now but it would take a lot to kill them.”

What do you think about Greg Nicotero’s comments regarding The Walking Dead Season 7 finale? Do you think this season has been too violent and depressing?

The Walking Dead Season 7 returns to AMC tonight, Feb. 12, at 9 p.m.

[Featured Image by AMC]