The Walking Dead season 6: showrunner explains why Negan is one of TV's greatest ever villains

"Negan is the villain that you hate to love"

The Walking Dead's Negan will be played by Jeffery Dean Morgan

We're not sure how many times the name Negan has been mentioned since The Walking Dead returned from its mid-season break, but whatever the figure, we lost count long ago.

Such is the villainous character's popularity in the graphic novels that the writers decided to shun the surprise of his inclusion by announcing that Negan would indeed be joining the series.

In fact, much of the sixth season's latter half has been spent building up to his introduction which will inevitably arrive in next month's season finale.

Fuelling the excitement even further, The Walking Dead's showrunner Scott Gimple has explained why Negan is considered one of television's greatest ever villains. Here's what he said in full:

"The worst kind of bullies in high school, and junior high, and elementary school, and kindergarten, pre-school, and the womb were the bullies that were funny. That was the worst because the bullies that were funny were show-people. I’m not going to say show men because there are a lot of girl bullies in school, too. They were funny and yet they were awful… And Negan is the ultimate version of that bully. And he is an incredible strategist. He can often appear capricious. He is pure id. He is this force of nature. He’s charismatic. A lot of villains on shows and comics and everything, it’s like, “Oh they’re the villain that you love to hate.” I think Negan is the villain that you hate to love. But you just love him. And he does some horrible things, but he has a reason for them."

Merge this with what executive producer David Alpert said:

“We want [people who don’t know Negan] to get into conversations with their friends like, "ah, that’s nothing" and the friends who have read the comics be like, ‘Oh, you just don’t know. You just don’t know.'"

Jeffery Dean Morgan will be playing the antagonist, and readers of the show's source material are a little worried: Negan's comic book introduction sees the death of a major character, so it's fair to say that we'll be saying goodbye to a beloved character very soon.

The Walking Dead's season finale will air in the UK on FOX at 9 PM on 4 April. The show's most recent episode received a fan backlash following the surprise death of a particular character.