Negan won’t kill Glenn in series seven of The Walking Dead, despite it happening in the comics

The new baddie of The Walking Dead, Negan, killed one of the heroes at the end of season six. Everyone wants to know who it is — and speculation has centred on Glenn.

The Walking Dead: Who will die? The most obvious one is Glenn (Steven Yeun).

It’s the question that is eating at The Walking Dead fans worse than a herd of Walkers consuming one of the living — who will Negan kill at the start of season seven?

Season six ended with another classic cliffhanger, with the new big baddie on the block killing one of Rick Grimes’ friends. But which one? With seasons even not screening until October, there’s a lot of theories running around.

The most obvious one is that Glenn (Steven Yeun) dies — after all, in Episode 100 of the comic book series, which the show is based on, he’s the one who falls at the hands of Negan’s barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat Lucille.

However, the last big cliffhanger was also based around Glenn, this time speculation he had been eaten by the zombies. Could they go to the well there again?

Actors Andrew Lincoln and Norman Reedus attend Comic Con. Picture: Getty Images

Throwing more mud into the waters is an interview at Comic-Con last week, where Andrew Lincoln (Rick), Norman Reedus (Daryl), Steven Yeun and Jeffery Dean Morgan (Negan) were interviewed and Morgan apparently let slip that his character did not kill any of the other three.

But was he just playing with us?

So if the answers are in the comic books, let’s see what the experts — Australia’s leading comic book stores — think.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

Theory 1: It will be Glenn

“They could go straight out,” said Guiseppe Savaglia of Classic Comics in Melbourne. “Only a certain percentage of the fans read the comics. So it would still be a big reveal. Joe Public, they don’t know what happens in the comics. And the writers have to think of the future direction of the show. How will changing who dies affect where the storyline goes?’

“They did give us a hint of this with Glenn in a scene in Terminus,” Scott Rau of King Comics in Sydney said. (In season five, several of the heroes are about to be killed by cannibals. The first one set to die was Glenn and the method? Baseball bat to the head).

Negan with his barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat Lucille.

“That’s one way to look at it — they’ll finally do the deed.”

“They could surprise us all by making it Glenn,” said Mitchell Davies, co-owner of Melbourne’s All Star Comics.

“It’s going to be a heartbreaking moment and our hearts will be in our mouths. Glenn’s part of the original cast so that might make it almost easier to deal with. It could be a cathartic moment — having experienced it already in the comics, having lived through the trauma and come out the other side.”

Theory 2: It’s Glenn and someone else

This works on the idea that Glenn has to die to trigger storyline changes that have already happened in the comics but the show still needs to shock, so a second character dies. The ones currently doing the rounds are Glenn’s wife Maggie (Lauren Cohan) or Abraham (Michael Cudlitz). Adding weight to that is Cohan supposedly posted a picture on Instagram from a beach while the show was filming. But, then again, Maggie was supposedly spotted in the background of the trailer for season seven ...

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“The show’s diverted away from the comics and changed on quite a number of plot points already,” Davies said.

“I’ve got a sickly feeling they’ll go down that path. One or more. They probably feel that they need to be one-up on the comics. Either way, it’s going to be a real turning point in the show.”

“There’s a lot of differences in the characters,” said Rau. “For instance the Dixon brothers (fan favourite Daryl and the now-dead Merle) don’t exist in the comics.”

Mark Fak, the manager of Comics R Us in Melbourne doesn’t like this theory.

“Negan goes to one of them and the ending is from their point of view until it fades to black. An additional death might seem like an epilogue. The main focus is on the one person so to kill another one after that ...”

Theory 3: It’s someone else

“My strong feeling is it won’t be Glenn,” Fak said.

“It could be a double bluff (and they kill him) but I think it’s just a single bluff. If they were going to kill Glenn, they would just do it, not leave it up in the air. Because then people would just go online, click on who Negan kills in the comics and then it would be so anticlimactic it won’t be funny.”

“My guess is they won’t because everyone will expect them to,” Savaglia said.

“There are rumours they filmed multiple death scenes so nobody would know,” Davies said.

“It seems silly to do that if it was just going to be Glenn.”

“It could be anything and it could go anywhere,” Rau said.

So who is going to die? We just don’t know, yet.

“Until we see it, it hasn’t happened. At least we’re all in a big, warm security blanket until it happens,” Davies said.

But Negan is just getting started. Morgan has been confirmed as regular for season seven and he is still brutalising their world in the comics, another 50 or so editions down the track.

“If you think he’s bad now, then see what he’s doing in the comics. My word! When that stuff comes to the TV show ...” Fak said.