The Walking Dead’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan reveals he still doesn’t know how the show’s eleventh and final season will play out. Based on the comic series from Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Tony Moore, AMC is currently airing the first part of The Walking Dead's expanded 24-episode season 11, which will conclude with a series finale in 2022. Negan (Morgan) has been an ambivalent cornerstone of the series ever since his bloody-baseball-bat-bashing of Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) in season 7 and the subsequent war with Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln). Following the latter’s departure, Negan has enjoyed a quasi-redemptive arc and is now working alongside Maggie Green/Rhee (Lauren Cohan) and Alexandria.
Season 11 sees the former leader of the Saviors and Maggie operating under a precarious truce as they try to save Alexandria from the Reapers. In addition to that plotline, which is exclusive to the series, the final season is loosely adapting the comic storyline encompassing issues #175-193, with Eugene (Josh McDermitt), Ezekiel (Khary Payton), Yumiko (Eleanor Matsuura), and Princess (Paola Lazaro) encountering the post-apocalyptic society, the Commonwealth—the most advanced civilization seen in the series so thus far. Filming for season 11 recently eclipsed its halfway point and is expected to continue through March of next year. That being said, Morgan still doesn’t know how everything will wrap up.
During a conversation on The Rich Eisen Show, Morgan talked about bringing an end to The Walking Dead. While praising the writers, the actor was asked if he knows how the show ends, saying he has no idea. Read what he had to say below:
"It's the last season, and so you know, trying to wrap up an 11-year program that has been such an iconic show for so long. I don't know how easy of a task that is for our writers and the people well above my pay grade. I don't know where they're going, and everything's kind of a surprise to me, every script is something new. So we will see. I'm hoping that Negan is gonna survive and continue sort of his road to redemption, but I have a feeling it's never going to be that easy...No, I don't [how it ends]. [The writers] say they know, I don't know that I believe them. But they say, the showrunner and the writers, say they know. I have no idea. I have asked, and they're not giving me anything other than the side-eye."
Morgan has previously expressed an interest in reprising the role of Negan, preferably in a spin-off ala Robert Kirkman’s Negan Lives one-off. The character’s origin was explored in AMC’s series during the season 10 finale, “Here’s Negan,” and the success of that episode bodes well for other Negan-centric projects. Of course, for Negan to appear elsewhere in The Walking Dead universe, which already includes two spinoff series including Fear of The Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: The World Beyond, he has to survive the final season. At this point, Maggie wants Negan dead, and his death would both bring her peace and Glenn justice.
The Walking Dead is in a unique position as its final season could lack a feeling of finality. So much of its story has been tied to the fate of Rick Grimes, and fans are still waiting to see the rest of his and Michonne’s (Danai Gurira) story in The Walking Dead movies. On top of that, a Carol (Melissa McBride) and Daryl (Norman Reedus) spinoff series has already been confirmed—seemingly all of the flagship series’ major players will still be in play. With Carl (Chandler Riggs) dead and Rick gone, the show has deviated from the comics so drastically, anything can happen and there’s virtually no end in sight. At least not in 2022.
Source: The Rich Eisen Show