Is AMC just screwing with us? After all, this wouldn't be the first time our emotions were tightly wrapped into a ball of anxiety and set ablaze by a meticulous fake-out. The Season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead is now so close we can practically taste the doom and gloom (and related sadness), meaning now is as good a time as any for AMC to kick off another long con. The subject this time around? Daryl Dixon, the show's reigning rock star.
During Sunday's special off-season edition of Talking Dead, a.k.a. the show where Chris Hardwick and the occasional A-lister talk about The Walking Dead, AMC hit fans with a brief tease of the tragedy to come. The scene, which clocks in at just under a minute, shows Saviors recruit Dwight rocking a pivotal piece of Daryl's wardrobe and attempting to use his motorcycle. Hmmm.
Goddamnit. Nothing about this clip screams good things for Daryl Dixon, who AMC would have us believe was on the receiving end of the delightfully late season 6 addition Lucille. The barbed wire-wrapped bat belongs to Negan, the towering villain with a penchant for profanity and the ability to single handedly deliver what may very well go down in TV history as the most frustrating cliffhanger of all time.
To keep the identity of Negan's bat victim a secret, AMC had Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Negan) film every possible outcome. "With the advent of drones, it can become such a game of cat and mouse that as far as sneaking a peek at the actors walking to set, we want to just keep our actors safe and the people who might be looking safe—like [when they’re] in the street," showrunner Scott Gimple told the Hollywood Reporter in June.
For those unfamiliar with the series' source material, the unlucky soul on the other end of Negan's beloved Lucille is none other than (SPOILER ALERT) our guy Glenn Rhee. Will the show follow suit? Find out when season 7 of The Walking Dead makes its surely record-breaking premiere Oct. 23.
