‘The Walking Dead’ season 7: Looking at Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan, Andrew Lincoln’s future through Negan’s lens

Tomorrow night, the season premiere of “The Walking Dead” will be airing on AMC, and the question on everyone’s mind at this point is fairly obvious: Who is Negan going to kill?

Given how many polls / stories / other forms of media are out there already talking about which character could be dying, we want to take a slightly different angle on this and talk about what this moment means to the actors behind the show. These are the people who have been living in this world for years, and obviously saying goodbye to one of their own, especially if it is someone who’s been a part of the series for the majority of its run, likely was really difficult.

For the actor leaving the show, it had to be even more challenging. Let’s put it in these terms: Earlier this year, you found out that you were out of a job. From there, you wanted to be able to go and pursue other opportunities, but you had to be very careful with how you went about doing so. If you were able to book gigs, they’d have to be under wraps until after “The Walking Dead” airs; otherwise, the public would know that you were leaving, much like it was fairly clear before Shane died that Jon Bernthal was moving on to do other things.

We do think that for any actor who departs the show, there will be many offers. Andrew Lincoln and Norman Reedus would get roles up the wazoo, but we can’t see either one of them leaving tomorrow. Personally, we feel like Lauren Cohan (Maggie), Michael Cudlitz (Abraham), Steven Yeun (Glenn), Danai Gurira (Michonne), Sonequa Martin-Green (Sasha), and Chandler Riggs (Carl) are the ones who’ve probably had to deal with rumors about their future the most. While we like Aaron, Rosita, and Eugene as characters, we’re not sure losing either one of them would be worthy of a huge media hoopla.

Whoever goes, we hope that in the week or two after the episode, we get to learn what else they get to be a part of moving forward. None of these actors deserves to be out of work for very long.

Who do you think is leaving? Share with a comment below, and head over to the link here for some other news on the series’ future! (Photo: AMC.)