"The Walking Dead" ended its sixth season with an intense cliffhanger that inevitably led to many fans biting their nails for the next chapter. Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) showed up with his barbed wire-covered bat, Lucille, and swung it directly at one of the beloved characters. Unfortunately, the victim's identity was left shrouded in mystery. Thankfully, when the show returns, it won't take too long before fans find out who was on the receiving end of that bat.

According to executive producer Gale Anne Hurd, season 7 will pick up immediately after the season 6 finale. "In this new season Negan is the gamechanger, and whatever we did someone was going to be unhappy... so we promised we will be picking up where that left off; we are not going to draw it out," Hurd said at a masterclass at the Edinburgh International TV Festival.

Of course, knowing that the big reveal will come immediately when the series premieres is not exactly comforting. Fans have come to love the heroes of the show and losing even just one of them is surely going to be a huge hit to the heart.

However, it did come as a pleasant surprise when one character, Abraham Ford, didn't meet the end that was expected of him. In Robert Kirkman's graphic novels from which the series is based, Ford met his untimely demise via an arrow to the eye. The television adaptation decided to veer away from that and reserved that death for Dr. Denise Cloyd (Merritt Wever). 

Popsugar spoke to Michael Cudlitz, who plays Ford, and asked him about the writers' decision to change it up. "I think transferring that specific death of the crossbow arrow through the eye to Denise was sort of an Easter egg for the audience who follow the graphic novels," he said. Additionally, Cudlitz shared his excitement about getting to explore a world with both Negan and Ford in it.

"The Walking Dead" season 7 will air on Oct. 23, Sunday, on AMC.