Something wicked this way comes and it’s heading straight for Rick Grimes and the survivors on AMC’s The Walking Dead. Sure, you could say that about every season of the hit series, but according to new reports, the biggest, baddest villain that the series has seen yet may be on the way for Season 6. Though Rick and the gang are safe and sound behind the walls of the Alexandria Safe Zone, the world outside said walls is still wide open and full of all manner of creepies, crawlies, and things that go bump in the night. The worst of those bumps is rumored to make a cameo at the end of Season 6, setting him up to be the biggest bad of them all for Season 7. Who, you ask? Negan.

For fans of The Walking Dead comic, the thought of Negan, armed with his barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat Lucille and clad in a leather jacket, is enough to make one’s blood run cold. While I won’t go into any spoilers here–you can read them yourself on various other parts of the Internet–just know that where Negan comes, trouble follows. Trouble in the form of dead bodies, bloodshed, and copious amounts of swearing. Seriously, this dude has a mouth like a murderous sailor.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, showrunner Scott M. Gimple revealed his thoughts on whether or not we could expect to see Negan.

“It’s absolutely a possibility, and when I say it’s a possibility, we have a plan in place, but there’s a couple variables for that plan that we’re deciding about. It really depends on a few factors as we move into setting up the last bit of the season story-wise.”

So, it sounds like it’s not a question of “if”, but rather a question of “when” we’ll see the famously foul-mouthed villain strutting his way across the small screen. It’s no small secret that Negan has been one of the most demanded characters by The Walking Dead fans, and now actors are starting to throw their hats into the ring too. Case in point, Mad Men star Jon Hamm confirmed that he was open to playing the part and had spoken with series creator Robert Kirkman in a recent interview with MTV:

Kirkman also chimed in with his thoughts on whether we could expect to see fan-favorite characters like Negan and Paul Monroe, better known as Jesus, in the coming weeks and months ahead.

“When it comes to characters like The Governor, Michonne, Abraham, and others like Jesus and Negan who are fan-favorite characters in the comics, it’s always a challenge to get it right because it’s those characters—much like Rick Grimes in the beginning—that fans already have a sense of and expectations for. So we’re always careful, and I feel like we’ve done a really good job servicing those fan expectations.  Hopefully that trend will continue…if the characters you mention are to appear soon.”

I feel like nothing would service fan expectations more than letting the always-charming Jon Hamm get absolutely unhinged and unleash his inner psychopath, right?

The Walking Dead returns for its sixth season on Sunday, October 11 at 9pm. In the meantime, you can catch the premiere of Fear The Walking Dead on Sunday, August 23.

Would you like to see Jon Hamm as Negan? Let us know in the comments below!

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HT: Collider

Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of 100 Things Avengers Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die. You can follow him on Twitter (@Osteoferocious).