The Walking Dead’s sixth season relentlessly built towards the introduction of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan in the season finale. And now that Negan is here, he won’t be leaving anytime soon!
The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that AMC has upped Morgan to a series regular for the upcoming seventh season of The Walking Dead. And he won’t be alone. Tom Payne, Austin Amelio, and Xander Berkeley were also added to the main cast. Payne portrays Paul Monroe, a character better known as “Jesus” to his friends. Amelio plays Dwight, a physically scarred follower of Negan, and Berkeley’s character is Gregory, the cowardly leader of the Hilltop, another group of survivors introduced in the previous season.
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Assuming that the TV series will continue to follow the trajectory laid out in Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s comic book storyline, all four of those characters will be around for the foreseeable future. That said, the television show does have a habit of killing off characters sooner than expected, or shifting their fates to other characters. Let’s just say that someone else was supposed to die by Dwight’s crossbow in season 6.
The series is also adding two new characters for the seventh season who have never appeared in the comic: Naomi, “a grandmotherly type who, having lost so many loved ones, is now willing to do whatever it takes not to have to bury any more”; and Jennie, “a sunny-side-up kinda teenager, kind, with a world-weary toughness.” There is currently no word on who will portray those characters.
AMC has The Walking Dead slated to return for its seventh season in October. The first trailer for season 7 will likely debut at Comic-Con later this month.
