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The Walking Dead took a baseball bat straight to our hearts when it closed Season 6 with its most brutal cliffhanger yet. The villainous Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) was mercilessly beating one of our lead characters to death without the show revealing who suffered the grisly fate.

The Season 7 premiere will give us all the gory details, showrunner Scott Gimple promised at New York Comic Con Saturday. A newly released sneak peek from the episode confirms at least one person is safe from the chopping block -- even if it's kind of a no-brainer.

Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) -- leader of his group and arguably the man who brought Negan's wrath down upon his makeshift family in the first place -- is still in one piece in the new scene from the premiere.

Despite his obvious devastation at witnessing one of his friends being murdered right in front of him (or to his right, according to the splatter of blood on his cheek), Rick still has enough grit left to promise that he's going to kill Negan for what he's done.

It's a scene ripped straight out of the pages of Robert Kirkman's comic, with Negan waving his bloodied bat, Lucille, right under Rick's nose and looking altogether unconcerned as Rick promises, "Not today, not tomorrow, but I'm gonna kill you."

Negan assesses Rick before asking his "right hand man," Simon, what kind of weapon Rick was carrying when he was captured -- turns out it was an axe. Negan asks Rick if he has his own right hand man, "maybe one of these fine people still breathing?" Or maybe it's the person that Negan just killed?

SEE ALSO:New 'Walking Dead' trailer takes us to the heart of Ezekiel's kingdom

Then Negan asks for Rick's axe, holds it in front of our hero's traumatized face and, as the tension builds... slips it into his belt. Just as we breathe a sigh of relief, Negan grabs Rick by the collar and drags him into his trailer, ominously telling his followers, "I'll be right back -- maybe Rick'll be with me."

Then, just to twist the knife further, the camera pans down to the bloodstained ground, where what's left of Negan's victim is battered beyond recognition.

After three minutes that harrowing, who knows how much worse it can get in Season 7? Fans of Kirkman's comic will be well aware that Rick actually did have his right hand cut off in that iteration of the story, although the deed was done by a different villain, The Governor, and not by Negan. Will the show offer another twist on what comic readers are expecting, or will Rick lose his right hand and his right hand man in one fell swoop?

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We may not know much about Season 7 or Negan's victim yet, but here's what the cast and executive producers had to say about the upcoming year during the New York Comic Con panel.

SEE ALSO:AMC to air two-hour 'Walking Dead' primer

Scott Gimple:"Putting together these episodes this season, the performances this year are astounding... Be on the lookout for some amazing performances, some unbelievably creepy, strange, weird walkers, and if you can do that in the seventh year of a show that has walkers, you can hold your head high."

Gale Anne Hurd:"It really is a larger world; there are new worlds were going to be exploring with new characters, Ezekiel (Khary Payton) and Shiva (his tiger) being two of them. Even though the show has been a big show, it's essentially been contained [in previous seasons]. We now have a Walking Dead universe thanks to Mr. Kirkman."

Norman Reedus:[On shooting the final scene of Season 6 and the beginning of Season 7] "It’s a weird feeling to be that powerless when we've always fought so hard -- to be put on your knees. I hated shooting a lot of that, it was miserable. It sucked, it really did."

David Alpert: "Negan really is a sign of the new world, they thought they could take him, they thought they were the baddest people out there, but then they run into someone better, stronger, more organized... there's very little hope for our characters, because Negan wields that power perfectly for the apocalypse."

Danai Gurira:The Governor was small potatoes compared to this guy… He has outposts in various places we don't even know about yet. He's extremely smart … earlier in the season, his followers saying 'I am Negan,' this whole idea of 'who is Negan?' It's an indoctrination process far beyond what the Governor was doing."

Jeffrey Dean Morgan: "As much charisma as Negan has, there's a big element of fear, a lot of his followers follow him for fear of getting an iron to their face or worse, but he's kept a lot of these people alive for a long time. He's unlike a character that I've ever seen -- I've played some dastardly motherfuckers but they don't hold a candle to Negan… people follow him because they're scared shitless of him, as they should be."

Lennie James: [On Morgan's attempts to be a pacifist]"The path he's walking is a path he's trying to walk -- he's out in the world ... When he shoots that Savior [to save Carol], I think one bullet would've done it, but he emptied the clip… for those people begging to go back to Morgan the killer, be careful what you wish for."

Melissa McBride:[On Carol's journey] "Every step she's taken up to this point has devastated her, she just needs to get her head together and try to find some sense -- what we have to do is so monstrous and we're becoming the monsters we're fighting… what is it about this world that makes us want to survive so much? That's a huge question, I love that question."

Greg Nicotero:"Every season, the premiere has a very different tone… because everybody knows how the season ended last year and that someone’s gonna go, it was more of a challenge going into it and knowing what people are going to expect. My favorite moments were found not where you'd expect them. There are some unbelievable moments that come out of the fog and the haze of the post traumatic stress after that moment... When we were finished, it took me a few weeks to recover from it."

Lauren Cohan:"What's so rare about this episode… it's so unexpected, jarring and destabilizing in a way we've never had. The story that comes from this year is insane, we were completely knocked off our feet, literally. We'll see how people deal with what they could and should and would have done as we go through."

The Walking DeadSeason 7 premieres Sunday, Oct. 23 at 9 p.m. on AMC.

TopicsThe Walking Dead

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