'The Walking Dead' Season 7 Air Date, Updates, Spoilers: Extended Promo Reveals Rick Survives, But is Negan Going to Cut Off His Hand? Major Spoilers for Next Season, and More
A new extended trailer for "The Walking Dead" Season 7 was released during the New York Comic Con, and it is seething with tension and anger. After Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) killed off whoever he had killed off, Rick is shown alive and well, looking shaken to hell. He vowed to Negan's face that he will kill him. "Not today, not tomorrow, but someday."
Negan, however, refused to take his threat seriously and even asked Rick what weapon he plans to use against him. Then he has someone get Rick's axe, and then drags him into the RV. In the comics, Rick had his hands cut off by the Governor. So far, he's survived with his hands intact. But is Negan putting an end to that in "The Walking Dead" Season 7 premiere?
Source of the zombie outbreak
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Apparently, series creator Robert Kirkman also knows when and how the zombie apocalypse began - but refused to dish on the details. During a panel interview in the New York Comic Con, "The Walking Dead" creator vowed to never reveal the source of the outbreak, at least in the comics. He knows what caused it, of course, being the universe's creator. But he explained that bringing the science into the comics would only serve to stray it into science fiction realm.
Kirkman did make sense. After all, what's the expected response to knowing what the source is? Rick and group would have simply gone the reverse-engineering route: antidotes, vaccines, instead of dealing with the zombies. And that's just no fun. As Kirkman said, "The Walking Dead" was never about the zombies, it's about the people who are involved in that world.
There's still a possibility that secret makes it into the AMC show, however, though it's unlikely to pop up in "The Walking Dead" Season 7 yet. But Kirkman joked that he might publish a little book that explains it all in the event he goes broke.
Important plot points
This isn't the first time Robert Kirkman opted to withhold major plot points from "The Walking Dead" Season 7. He'd also refused to let the comics and the show have similar endings, saying he'd like the comics to outlive the show. If necessary, he said, he'd help them craft their own direction, but his ending is purely comic canon.
Kirkman, however, didn't shy away from discussing Negan's victim in "The Walking Dead" Season 7. During his stint at the NYCC, a fan had gone up to him and begged him not to kill off Glenn (Steven Yeuhn), because he's the only Asian in the show. Kirkman, however, pointed out that he will be a "different kind of racist" if he kept the guy alive just because he's Asian.
He also revealed that Negan (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is meant to die soon in the comics. In his original plan, he has Rick ship Negan's head to Maggie as an apology for letting him kill off Glenn. But Jeffrey Dean Morgan had just recently signed on to become a series regular, so it looks like his death won't happen just yet on "The Walking Dead" Season 7.
Kirkman, however, revealed that there's another major death that would devastate Negan: Lucille, his trusty bat. He said that in "The Walking Dead" issue 159 of the comics, Negan will be killing off a survivor, only to have Lucille get splintered into pieces. Justice served.
"The Walking Dead" Season 7 will air on Oct. 23 on AMC.
