“Here’s Negan”: The Walking Dead Showrunner Previews the Morgans’ Negan Prequel Episode

The Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang previews “Here’s Negan,” the last of six new Season 10 bonus episodes and the first episode to take a swing at Negan’s (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) untold origin story. Amid rising tensions with Maggie Rhee (Lauren Cohan), who he widowed years earlier, Carol (Melissa McBride) takes Negan on a journey that gives him time to think about his past life and the future. Flashing back to more than a decade before The Walking Dead‘s tenth season, Negan hunkers down with his cancer-stricken wife, Lucille (guest star Hilarie Burton Morgan), and becomes the baseball bat-bashing leader of the Saviors.

“I’m really excited for the fans to see this episode in general. [Walking Dead creator Robert] Kirkman wrote this great little ‘Here’s Negan’ side comic, and we all just loved it on the writing side. We’ve always wanted to do it, have not found the right place for it yet, so we’re really excited to tell this story of Negan before the apocalypse and in the early days of it,” Kang said during Sunday’s Walking Dead Extended Season 10 Preview Special. “We cast his real-life wife Hilarie Burton to play Lucille, and she’s just perfect for the role. They are so great together, so I’m so excited for people to see these two together, and their beautiful chemistry, the way that they interact off each other.”

Kang teased the prequel episode “really gives you this different window into the person that Negan was, and I think that’s going to be really interesting for people regardless of whether or not they know the comic story because this is our show-specific take on ‘Here’s Negan.’”

Miles Mussenden (Army Wives, Cloak and Dagger) and Rodney Rowland (Space: Above and Beyond, Veronica Mars) are among the previously revealed cast members appearing in the prequel episode inspired by creator Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s 16-chapter comic book origin story of the same name.

“It’s in the aftermath of 10A and 10B. It is a part of that story. It’s connected to all that,” Walking Dead Universe chief content officer Scott Gimple told ComicBook.com about the extended tenth season that will conclude on April 4. “Even like ‘Here’s Negan’ obviously has to do with Negan’s backstory, but even then, that is directly connected to the story coming out of Season 10. These episodes… There were six episodes, six weeks. We had to go right at it.”

On scripting and filming the six episodes during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gimple added, “Angela, the staff, some writers from the past, from Walking Dead past, some people who came back to actually work on them. Everybody just gave it their all. And like Fear the Walking Dead, they’re concentrated stories because they’re shot in a way where we only have a couple of characters that we’re focusing on. I just love those kind of stories. It’s weird, for all of the intensity and fire that was under everyone to turn out as well, they’re amazing in that ‘Here’s Negan’ is an incredible episode. It’s really strange, the circumstances, how this all came together, but these six episodes are gonna be something that I think people are gonna really, really enjoy.”

Season 10 of The Walking Dead returns with six all-new bonus episodes Sunday, February 28, on AMC. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD.