The Walking Dead: When Will Rick And Negan Finally Fight Once And For All?

12/14/2016 02:20 pm EST

The Walking Dead's seventh season has been a slow build to Rick Grimes' rise back to power. Starting with the show's hero being completely stripped of his role as leader and forced into submission by Negan and his Saviors, Season 7A ended with the first shades of Rick Grimes finally launching a rebellion.

With a two-month break ahead of us, the big question of the off-season (aside from "Who is watching Alexandria?") is when will Rick finally fight Negan once and for all?

Well, based on the events of The Walking Dead comics and the pacing of the show in equivalent moments, it's safe to say it will be a while before the two leaders of the apocalypse show down.

The Walking Dead Season 7A skipped around a bit but ended with a storyline equivalent to that off iszue #111. Issue #108 and #105 were both covered thoroughly in the mean time, with issue #138's introduction of the Oceanside community being largely altered along the way.

Season 7 started with the infamous moments of issue #100.

On average, The Walking Dead covers about 20 issues in a single season -- sometimes more, sometimes less. With Season 7, although we are already at an equivalent to issue #111, the safe bet is on less by Episode 7x16. Rather than following Rick and Negan's adventures like the comics largely chose to at this point in the story, the AMC series has been dedicating entire episodes to characters like Tara and Daryl (who has never existed on the pages).

The Walking Dead will see a long March to War story arc as Rick rallies Alexandria, the Kingdom, and the Hilltop to take on the Saviors, assuming the show continues to follow the books. Of course, there will likely be a few curveballs along the way, delaying the realization of All Out War on television in favor of further character development, making the inevitable character losses during the war more devastating.

So, back to the topic at hand -- when we will finally see Rick and Negan fight to the death?

The Season 8 finale.