'The Walking Dead' season 7 spoilers, air date: Jeffrey Dean Morgan says fans will 'love to hate' Negan

A promotional image for "The Walking Dead" season 7Facebook/TheWalkingDeadAMC

The premiere episode of "The Walking Dead" season 7 is just around the corner, which means that viewers will finally find out who received Negan's wrath at the end of the previous season.

In an interview with Den of Geek, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the actor who portrays the vile antagonist Negan in the upcoming season of AMC's post-apocalyptic zombie survival series, previously hinted that his character will kill more than one member of Rick Grimes' (Andrew Lincoln) group. But the actor clarified his statement in another interview with Variety Latino, saying that he does not necessarily mean that he killed at least two people in the upcoming season 7 premiere.

"Negan does kill a lot of people in the next couple of years. Before we even meet him he's killed a lot of people. Negan's been around for a long time," the actor stated. This means that Morgan counted Negan's kills even before he met Rick and the rest of the group.

But while Morgan opted not to give out the name of Negan's victim as well as the other information about the plot of the premiere episode, the actor revealed that the return of "The Walking Dead" for season 7 will be too much to handle.

He mentioned that viewers will definitely hate Negan after the first episode, but he is still hoping that his character will be a person who fans will love to hate as the season progresses. "You'll get to see some different sides to him that I think are pretty interesting," Morgan stated.

Meanwhile, speculations about the death of Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Glenn (Steven Yeun), under Negan's spiked baseball bat called Lucille, continues after fan theories claimed that the promo photo for the upcoming episode showed an engagement ring and Hershel's clock. But the series has yet to confirm if there is truth to the theories.

The premiere episode of "The Walking Dead" season 7 is scheduled to air on Sunday, Oct. 23, at 9 p.m. ET on AMC.