'The Walking Dead' finale will be ‘different’ from what we’ve seen so far

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Warning: There are some spoilers ahead if you're not caught up with "The Walking Dead" along with some speculation for future episodes.

The mid-season premiere of "The Walking Dead" set the stage for where the rest of season six will go. 

Rick (Andrew Lincoln) told his son Carl (Chandler Riggs) he has grand plans to make a better, new world. But don't expect it to be sunshine and rainbows from here on out.

Just because Alexandria is free of walkers, and Carl appears to have made it through a life-changing accident, another larger threat is on the horizon.

When I spoke with "The Walking Dead" executive producer and make-up supervisor Greg Nicotero ahead of the mid-season premiere he told me the show's finale was almost finished, and it's an episode he can't wait for fans to see. 

"It’s the 15th episode of 'The Walking Dead' I’ve ever directed and I can say with 100% confidence that it’s my favorite episode I’ve ever shot," Nicotero told Tech Insider.

That's high praise from the man who just directed the shocking mid-season premiere which was praised by both critics and fans. 

But could "The Walking Dead" season six finale get any bigger than the mid-season opener?

"I don’t think bigger is the right word. I think different," explains Nicotero. "Every episode that I’ve directed has had a very different tonal shift to it like the Tyrese episode was very intimate. Escape from Terminus was like a little action movie. That was my 'Die Hard' episode. This [the mid-season premiere] is sort of my ‘Night of the Living Dead’ episode."

If you're familiar with the comic series on which the hit AMC series is based, you'll know the show has been teasing its next big villain, Negan, for some time. Jeffrey Dean Morgan was recently cast in the role, and, according to The Hollywood, he'll make his first appearance in the season finale. 

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As to whether or not we'll actually see him is still up in the air. Nicotero remained pretty tight-lipped about an appearance.

"Well, I can tell you Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s a great actor," he said. "I was really, really pleased. You’ll see. I don’t want to talk too much about it. There’s got to be some mystery left."

Lincoln previously hinted back in November that the finale will be pretty dark.

“We just wrapped 24 hours ago on what I think is the darkest and most extraordinary season finale that we’ve ever attempted,” he told The Wrap. “To say that I’m excited would be a vast understatement. And it ends with a very big bang.” 

If we do see Negan on the season six finale, expect it to be a huge entrance. The character, a foul-mouthed antithesis of Rick Grimes, has a warped sense of justice in the apocalypse. He was introduced in issue 100 of the comic series and came in swinging with his trusty barbed-wire bat Lucille. 

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We've heard Negan's name uttered on the show by the group of motorcycle men Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham encountered on the road back to Alexandria. in last fall's mid-season finale. Daryl, of course, blew Negan's men up in the mid-season opener so that may not bode well for his character's future.

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"I can’t tell you how excited we are for the future of the show," Nicotero said speaking of the final eight episodes of season six. "Andy, Norman, and I talk in great length weekly about how people are going to react to the second half of the season — especially the finale which is an episode that I am extremely, extremely excited about."

The season six finale of "The Walking Dead" will air April 3.