Fans are still reeling over The Walking Dead 's shocking Season 6 cliffhanger, with many worried that the person on the receiving end of Lucille's barbed-wire fury could be Glenn or another beloved character. Unfortunately, the man who swung the bat, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, aka Negan, can't provide much comfort. On a conference call with reporters following the finale, Morgan reveals that while his character may have taken out a beloved member of Rick's crew, even the actor himself has no idea who was the poor victim is — although who Negan killed might be revealed before long.
"I understand the fans' frustration, I get that, but I have to trust these writers and the showrunners to know what they are doing," Morgan says on the call. "I believe they will be back to see who met Lucille."
If you are one of the fans who were disappointed with the ending, then fear not, because Morgan believes that Season 7 will show every gruesome detail of the mysterious death. "We will pick up exactly where we left off, and yeah, you will see who was at the end of that bat and we will take off from there," Morgan reveals.
According to the actor, the character death, while major, was not the point of that scene. The death will drive Season 7, yes, but Season 6's ending was all about Rick losing any semblance of control in the face of Negan. "That was the end of the story for that season, that Rick has lost control, and there is Negan and he has all the control," Morgan says. "It's not about the death of the person. The death of the person will kick off Season 7."
The actor also revealed that, when signing onto the show, he had no clue that the season would end on a cliffhanger of such epic proportions at all. Said Morgan, "I didn't know it would be a cliffhanger until I watched the show. I don't know if any of the cast knew how it was going to end, which caused a bunch of nervousness going in."
The main cast was so nervous, in fact, that many of them didn't look Morgan in the eye, the actor reveals, during the two nights it took to film Negan's monologue. And as for how people reacted, not everyone was on board with the cliffhanger ending, which left an unseen member of Rick's crew dead. Fans took to social media to express their frustration, as in a season where so many characters have cheated death, the bloody, fade to black ending felt like a cheat to some. Morgan views the ending in a very different way, though, and has a feeling that viewers will be back no matter their protestations.
And regardless, it seems that Negan's reign of terror is just beginning — if you can call it that. While Morgan promises that fans will see a lot of bad behavior from the charismatic Negan in the next "one or two years," he doesn't see his character as a villain. If anything, he and Rick are on two sides of the same apocalyptic coin. Negan was once a car salesman, and he has done everything necessary to survive.
"I never looked at him as a psychopath," Morgan says. "He's a lot like Rick. If we had been following Negan since the beginning he would be the hero."
Whether you loved or loathed the cliffhanger, you can't deny that it was one hell of a setup for Season 7.
Image: AMC
