The Walking Dead: Jeffrey Dean Morgan says Negan's backstory is coming

Here’s what we know. Negan has swung his barbed-wire baseball bat down and someone is dead because of it. But what happened prior to all of that? And what happens next? We sat down with Negan himself, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who told us to expect lots of answers, including some intel on how the leather-clad lunatic has been surviving — and thriving — in the zombie apocalypse.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So we’ve seen Negan’s baseball swing. What comes next?

JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN: Well, the show’s not over. This introduction will continue through the first episode for sure, and it’s just kind of Negan setting the rules and telling everybody this is how it’s going to be, and if you don’t follow these rules this is what’s going to happen. He’s going to make a real clear example that everyone is going to understand, but he’s going to do it with a little bit of flair and panache that only Negan can have.

So basically what you’re going to look at is picking up right where we left off. You’re not going to have to wait. Once we sit through the six months, on October 23 you’re going to know and that will be that. But you’re going to see a lot more of Negan. I think we saw 12 or 15 minutes of him establishing himself and how this new world is going to be for the survivors, swinging his d—, pleased to meet you. We just touched on it.

What is Negan’s world view? How does he see this new post-apocalyptic world, what he should be in it, his relationship to other people? What does that mean to him?

We’re going to find this out. We’re going to actually find out a lot more about his world. The last six seasons we’ve followed Rick and his band of merry men. Now you’re going to find out in that time Negan has been running his own show in his own way and coming across all sorts of people and taking care of business. So he has created his army of followers and some are probably reluctant followers, and if they’re reluctant followers he has a way to deal with that as well. If you read the comic books a lot of this isn’t coming as a huge surprise, but we’ll get to see a little bit of that. So basically Negan is going to impose his will one way or another.

So in finding out more about Negan, we’ll find out how his life has been since the zombie apocalypse started, since the outbreak began, and we’ll find out sort of how Negan has come to be who he is. He rules with an iron fist and a sense of humor. He’s a very charismatic guy. But a lot of those questions will be answered and more are coming, but we’re going to find out some backstory very quickly on how the Saviors operate and how Negan operates. I think by mid-season or so a lot of those questions will be answered.

For more Walking Dead scoop, follow Dalton on Twitter @DaltonRoss.