The Walking Dead showrunner teases Whisperer Negan, promises ‘cliffhanger’ finale

After a long midseason break, The Walking Dead is back in action this weekend — but showrunner Angela Kang is already looking ahead to this season’s eventual finale. Spoiler alert: There’s a cliffhanger coming.

Kang told Entertainment Weekly one big story they’re excited to dig into in the back half of the season is Negan’s (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) stint with the Whisperers. He’s looking to enter into an uneasy alliance with the creepy, skin-wearing cultists. But is he playing the long game, or really switching sides? Only time will tell, and as comic fans know, this move certainly looks to echo Negan’s comic storyline.

“One of the things that we love from the comic book is Negan amongst the Whisperers, but as with anything with the show, there’s a bit of the comics leading the way and then there’s a bit of us riffing off of that inspiration and hopefully delivering some other surprises for those fans, who are very familiar with the comic books,” she said. “…But Negan is in with Alpha and we see the ways that he does what Negan does so well, which is try to read people, try to see how he can work them. It’s fun to see what these to do with their roles, because they’re both very smart, formidable leaders and now they have to wrangle each other and kind of negotiate what the roles are and how they feel about each other, and how they may cause trouble together.”

Looking beyond the show’s imminent return, Kang said they’re actually in post-production on the season finale right now. She couldn’t offer up much as far as details, but teased fans should be paying attention to everything that happens in the back half of the season — as it’ll feed into the direction for the finale and eventual Season 11.

“So there is some stuff that could feel like a finale, smack in the middle of the run of the back half. So there’s some cool stuff. At the finale itself, there’s some really big emotional important things that happen, as well as some new stuff, which will hopefully be surprising for people,” she teased. “I’ll just say that there’s some big stuff and there is a cliffhanger, without getting into what exactly that is. But I think hopefully it will be exciting.”

The Walking Dead returns this Sunday on AMC.