We're so close to the sixth season finale of The Walking Dead [1], we can almost taste it. The sad thing is, though, it tastes very, very bittersweet. By now, you must know that the concluding episode will feature the dreaded debut of Negan [2], one of the most infamous villains in TWD's universe.

We've heard a lot about the man — the cast has talked their fair share [3] — and we've suspected that he's going to dispatch someone very close to our hearts. At first we thought it might be Glenn [4], but as time went on we also suspected Maggie [5] and even poor Carol [6] as potential victims. Only time will tell for sure, but in the interim, we've got new information to present. Scott Gimple, one of TWD's showrunners, has a new interview with Entertainment Weekly [7], and he's dishing more about Negan than ever before. Keep reading to see what he said.

1. He's not a villain . . . necessarily. "Through another lens, he's not a bad guy at all in the comic. He does some horrible things, but our people do some horrible things. He is, though, this unrepentant a-hole. He is somebody who is the ultimate bully."
2. He's the ultimate version of the worst kind of bully. "The worst kind of bullies in high school, and junior high, and elementary school, and kindergarten, pre-school, and the womb were the bullies that were funny . . . Negan is the ultimate version of that bully."
3. He's smart. "He is an incredible strategist. He can often appear capricious. He is pure id. He is this force of nature."
4. In a sense, he's charming. "He's charismatic . . . I think Negan is the villain that you hate to love. But you just love him. And he does some horrible things, but he has a reason for them."
5. He's actually not insane. "He's not a psychopath, and in some ways, he has this bizarre sort of empathy to him. It's bizarre that he actually does have some empathy and he does have a system and he does have, in some ways, even reason. There are a lot of moments that are so terrifying because you can't reason with him because he's made up his mind on something. But he does reason things out. He isn't just some psychopath."
6. He's going to make us . . . laugh? "He's going to terrify you but he's really going to make you laugh. A lot of the times you're going to be ashamed that you're laughing."
7. The events of his big debut are very much up in the air. "Whatever it is, it's really just all in service to being faithful to the comic book inasmuch as one can. That's always going to be relatively subjective as to what that means."
8. They change the show to keep the comic book fans on their toes. "Sometimes we have things from the book that people who read the comics maybe see coming a mile away, and we try to adjust that so that we can give them the same feeling they had when reading the book, which might have been shock or surprise or fear, any of those things."
9. Negan might or might not be killing exactly the same person he kills in the comics. "It might be wildly different, but it's all to get the same sort of feelings that you got when you read them. So will it be different? Absolutely. Will it be the same thing? Absolutely."
10. They tell the stories based on emotional pull. "We want to tell the story of the book but from an emotional standpoint first, and that does often create the changes that we do. "

Related:

• The Walking Dead Cast Actually Looks Pretty Fresh Without the Blood and Grime [8]
• The Walking Dead Just Ever So Subtly Foreshadowed the Season Finale [9]
• 40 Fun-Filled Snaps of The Walking Dead Cast Hanging Out in Real Life [10]
• This Walking Dead Theory Explains the 1 Thing You Never Realized Was a Problem [11]