Like it or not (and many of you don’t), the arrival of Negan has changed a lot of things on The Walking Dead. Rick’s no longer in charge, the Alexandria-Hilltop alliance would be over if it had ever really gotten off the ground, and oh, yeah—Glenn is dead (for real this time) as well as Abraham. The swinging villain and his band of Saviors have wreaked plenty of havoc, and who knows what they have in store for Daryl? So, as much as we might like to see the grinning asshole dispatched by someone from Alexandria, The Hilltop, The Kingdom, or Oceanside (seriously, this guy’s made a lot of enemies), he’s probably connected to too many threads to make an abrupt exit.
Negan portrayer Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s inclined to agree, as he tells Howard Stern that his character will be back for season eight. “I know I will be on board for season eight,” Morgan said. That’s no real indication of just how long he’ll be around, or if it will just be via flashback, but no one from AMC’s piped up to contradict him. So we should get used to having Negan and Lucille around, because they’ll be back with a vengeance this season after having sat out the last couple of episodes. According to Morgan: “We’ve finished [season seven] a week ago. The next two, I’m really big in. I’m fucking heavy in those.” And here we thought we were on Easy Street.