Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan is a force to be reckoned with.
He’s a sadist, an unhinged psychopath, and a calculating leader; but he’s also one of the more compelling villains that The Walking Dead has seen in years. First introduced at the tail-end of season 6, Negan arguably hit his stride during the somewhat contentious “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be,” when he lined up Rick and his ragtag crew before brutally executing Glenn and Abraham.
But for all of the malice on display, AMC’s adaptation is yet to really explore Negan’s murky past in full, and how Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s crazed survivor came to be. According to series showrunner Scott M. Gimple, though, The Walking Dead may still make room for Negan’s origin story, and even revealed to Yahoo! that there’s currently a “loose plan” in place to incorporate that backstory into the script at some point in the future. Season 8, perhaps?
I do believe yes, it’s in the future. You know, I’m always careful about this, [because] things can absolutely change. There’s a loose plan in place I have.
Citing Here’s Negan as a jumping-off point, Gimple then went on to discuss the 16-part backstory from Charlie Adlard and Robert Kirkman, the all-around founding father of The Walking Dead. The showrunner admitted that while certain story elements are “fairly far-flung,” TV viewers can look forward to some of that material making the jump across to the small screen in the future.
I take that Here’s Negan story as the backstory. There’s some aspects of it that will probably be cool [on the show]. It’s some fairly far-flung stuff…in the future, you will see some stuff from that.
The Walking Dead season 8 kicks off on October 22nd and fair warning; most of the cast and crew believe bumping off key characters is a necessary evil. It’ll also herald the show’s historic 100th episode, and if you’re on the hunt for a refresher, look no further than this poignant retrospective.