Warning: The following contains spoilers for "The Walking Dead" comic book and possibly AMC's "The Walking Dead."
Regardless of whether you're a comic book reader or not, you've likely heard of Negan from "The Walking Dead." He's the ultimate bad ass, the main villain of "The Walking Dead" world. Think of him like Thanos from the Marvel Cinematic Universe except instead of aliens, we're dealing with zombies.
If you have heard of Negan, you've also likely heard of his, err, unique introduction. First appearing in Issue 100 of the comic, Negan (Spoiler Alert) brutally beats Glenn to death with his barbed wire-wrapped bat that he affectionately names Lucille. It is one of the most shocking and disturbing scenes in the entirety of "The Walking Dead."
TV viewers have been wondering for years if the same course of events will play out on AMC. Glenn is a fan-favorite character who has already narrowly escaped death a handful of times. Showrunner Scott Gimple has also taken a creative license with several storylines from the source material during his time in charge. Even actor Steven Yeun has said that the show could pull a 180 and swap Glenn out for some other character for Negan's coming out party. Has this all just been clever misdirection and false hope or will Glenn actually survive the season six finale introduction of Negan?
Here's what Gimple had to say about the matter:
"Let me put it this way: Whatever it is, it's really just all in service to being faithful to the comic book inasmuch as one can. That's always going to be relatively subjective as to what that means. But taking inspiration from the moments of the comic book and playing them out to the ends of what it can be, it's all just like taking that moment from the book and figuring out a way to turn it up to get those feelings that it gave you and those emotions that it gave you that much more.
"Sometimes we have things from the book that people who read the comics maybe see coming a mile away, and we try to adjust that so that we can give them the same feeling they had when reading the book, which might have been shock or surprise or fear, any of those things. It might be wildly different, but it's all to get the same sort of feelings that you got when you read them. So will it be different? Absolutely. Will it be the same thing? Absolutely."
Gimple's answer doesn't offer much insight on what fans can expect when the Season 6 finale rolls around, but here's to hoping that he decided to throw a curve ball at us and save Glenn.
"The Walking Dead" airs Sunday nights on AMC at 9 pm ET.
