‘The Walking Dead’ Director Reveals How Hard It Was To Direct The Episode Where Negan Senselessly Killed

SPOILER ALERT: This article discusses AMC’s The Walking Dead as well as the comic book series on which it is based. Please proceed with caution if you have not yet viewed all available episodes and wish to avoid spoilers.

The Season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead was a particularly harrowing episode. Fans had waited in dreaded anticipation to find out who Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) had bludgeoned to death in the Season 6 finale. It had been a particularly long wait between seasons before viewers discovered that two characters actually lost their lives at the hand of Negan and his barbed wire bat, Lucille. While Glenn (Steven Yeun) was the sole recipient of Netgan’s brutality in the comic books, Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) also perished in the TV series.

Now, the director of that episode, Greg Nicotero, recently explained just how hard it had been to film the episode that saw the death of two fan-favorite characters.

According to Collider, Nicotero knew that the episode would fall to him to direct.

“I knew that that was gonna land on my shoulders to direct that episode, I went in and I directed the best episode that I could direct knowing that I was breaking people’s hearts,” Nicotero said.

The director also explained just how “rough” it was for him. He had read the comics previously and had thought, at the time, that the death of Glenn was somewhat of a senseless act.

“It was rough emotionally for me because I remember reading the comic book and seeing Glenn killed in the comic book, and I was really disturbed by how senseless it felt in the comic book,” he revealed.

“Like, the guy just says, ‘Eenie, meenie, minie, moe,’ and then he was gone. And it really bothered me.”

While Nicotero was disturbed by the episode, he also agreed that it did fit in with the premise of The Walking Dead, which has quite often brought up the fact that, during a zombie apocalypse, senseless death would always occur. It was also mindful of the fact that these characters are living perilously and can be gone in a mere blink of an eye.

As a result of this, and due to the fact that he was close with both Yeun and Cudlitz, he endeavored to create the best episode he could even if it meant the destruction of these characters.

Nicotero also recently revealed that another Negan storyline could have ended up differently. As previously reported by The Inquisitr, the Season Season 8 finale could have seen Negan killed off by Maggie (Lauren Cohan) rather than living through his capture by Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln).