The Walking Dead Producers Game To Explore Negan’s Backstory

Before the pillars of society collapsed into anarchy, and the dead began walking the Earth, who was Negan, exactly?

The Walking Dead viewers know Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s antagonist to be a cruel, unforgiving maniac with only one companion: Lucille, the barbed baseball bat capable of killing any walker (and any human, sadly) with a single swipe. But over the past two seasons, AMC’s zombie drama has alluded to Negan’s pre-apocalyptic life, and it seems the show’s producers are more than willing to deep dive into his backstory in season 9 and beyond.

While answering questions in its weekly fan mailbag, Skybound (h/t Screen Rant) noted that The Walking Dead‘s creators “expressed a willingness to dig deeper into [Negan’s] past.”

Color us intrigued. After all, Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s bat-wielding maniac is arguably one of the more intriguing characters among The Walking Dead roster – intriguing enough to warrant a spinoff series of his own, according to Morgan himself.

I would like to see Negan before the zombie apocalypse. Robert Kirkman has done a little bit of thought on the Negan pre-zombie apocalypse, and I would be more than happy to see that. I would like to take part in some filming of that. I think that would help explain this character a great deal. Because, unfortunately, the way things go with so many characters and storylines, we don’t see enough — and I think that that is needed, especially when you have a character like Negan.

Season 9 of The Walking Dead is already filming across parts of the U.S. ahead of its return this October. On the other end of the AMC lot is Fear The Walking Dead, whose fourth season continues this Sunday with “The Wrong Side of Where You Are Now.”