The Walking Dead: Jeffrey Dean Morgan Teases Negan's Season 10 Role

In Season 7 of The Walking Dead, Jeffrey Dean Morgan's was reigning supreme. In his premiere season, Negan was ruling the roost and belittling Rick Grimes along with the rest of Alexandria. The foul-mouthed villain became the centerpiece of the AMC zombie series. After an All Out War story with pitted Negan's Saviors against Rick's army, Negan was locked away in jail before Season 8 came to a close and was forced to spend most of Season 9 reduced to scattered appearances and humbled dialogue. Heading into Season 10, the Negan fans of the character grew to love will start to shine through again.

"I was so thrilled to know this year was coming. Last year had ended up being a lot longer than anticipated," Morgan told ComicBook.com at the The Walking Dead's Season 10 premiere event. "For real, all 16 episodes, all but one was spent in that jail. So, I was ready to kinda get out and stretch my legs again. But it's nice seeing what last year did, I was givin Negan some other sides, it made him a much more 3 dimensional character. We saw him defeated, and... We saw him want to die, and then we saw him have this relationship with Judith and we saw a side of him and gave him, I guess, a little bit of redemption in a lot of people's eyes."

While being humbled in a jail cell changed the tone of Negan's dialogue, the loud-mouthed leader was still in there. "I always thought that part of Negan was in him, we'd just never have seen it before," Morgan said. "We saw a little bit with Karl, but now we got this 3 dimensional character who's about to get out of jail for the first time in a long, long time and I think he is ready to stretch his legs and his, and do some talking and start some shit."

As the story goes in The Walking Dead comics, Negan plays a major role in the Whisperer War. Not only does he help the leader in Alexandria to leverage the fear of the Whisperers as a means to get people following again but he also is responsible for the death of Whisperer leader Alpha. It is a moment Morgan hopes to see realized on television.

"I don't know what you'd have to not know what happens [with Negan and Alpha], so I'm aware, but I stopped reading the comics after Negan's introduction," Morgan said. "Just because I didn't want to be bummed out that we didn't shoot something. Or have it indicate too much about what I was gonna do, I like kinda being more surprised. I will go back when we're done shooting this show and I will read everything."

"I mean, I think I wanna do it," Morgan adds. "It would be crazy to say I don't wanna do it. I'm good with it."

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The Walking Dead returns for its tenth season at 9pm ET on October 6 on AMC.