The Walking Dead season 6 finale’s ending may have had fans screaming WTF, but soon Negan will spout off a plethora of F-words all his own, according to a new report. Although Jeffrey Dean Morgan sent chills up our spines with his portrayal of the creepily charismatic, mustachioed, baseball bat-wielding leader of the Saviors, comic book fans couldn’t help but have flashbacks to the whole “They just screwed with the wrong people” debacle of the season 4 finale. Thankfully, it seems our fears will be assuaged come August. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, executive producer and director Greg Nicotero revealed that the full uncensored version of Negan’s speech will be included on the Blu-ray. This should come as a small comfort to fans who were disappointed by the relatively sanitized language used by Negan during the season finale.
“We had to shoot two versions,” Nicotero explained in the interview. “We had to shoot the Blu-ray version, which had a lot of the swearing and a lot of Negan’s colorful language, and then we had to shoot the broadcast version. So when you get the DVD or the Blu-ray version, that will have the full Negan speech from the graphic novel.”
While it may seem like a minor detail to some, it means the world to some comic book fans. Calling Negan’s language “colorful” is the understatement of the year. This guy uses the word f–k more than Carl eats roof pudding, which we have learned from experience is an awful lot.
For context, here’s a few panels of the comic book version. The language, as you can surmise, is absolutely NSFW.
As I’m sure comic book readers will agree, this version is far superior, even in Nicotero’s estimation. In fact, Nicotero originally included the swear-filled version in his director’s cut of the finale episode.
“Even when I did my director’s cut I actually put the Blu-ray cut of the scene into my director’s cut because I thought it was so powerful that I wanted Kirkman and Gale and everyone to see what the sequence looked like with the momentum of Negan’s speech in there. I know Jeffrey and I both kind of preferred that version, it just felt better to be able to say swear words.”
The Walking Dead season 6 is available on Blu-ray and digital HD on August 23, 2016.
Will you be picking up the Blu-ray to hear Negan uncensored? Who do you think died? Let us know in the comments below.
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Images: AMC
Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. Follow him on Twitter and ask him about his season 7 theories (@Osteoferocious).
