TWD season 7: spoilers, cast, air date and everything you need to know 

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Ending on possibly the most talked-about TV cliffhanger since "Who Shot JR?", the last season of 

With a military-style operation in place to prevent the identity of Negan\'s victim being leaked, spoilers are thin on the ground. But here\'s everything we do know so far:

The Walking Dead season 6 finale spoilers: Who died?

In case you missed it, \'Last Day on Earth\' – April\'s season six finale – ended with Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and 10 other survivors captured and brought before the terrifying Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).

Rick\'s party consisted of his son Carl, Daryl, Michonne, Glenn, Abraham, Sasha, Eugene, Aaron, Rosita and Maggie – the last of whom is pregnant and in bad shape.

Negan decides to punish Rick\'s group for their crimes against him (they\'d previously killed a number of his troops) and uses "Lucille", a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire, to beat one of them to death.

The thrashing is seen from the POV of the victim, leaving the viewers none the wiser as to who Negan picked.

The cliffhanger left fans peeved, to put it mildly, with viewer outrage and petitions forcing 

creative team to apologise again and again and again.

Negan kill? Digital Spy readers voted Glenn (Steven Yeun) as the most likely candidate, with Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) coming in a close second.

One particularly savvy fan even stripped the audio from the final scene, slowed it right down and captioned what he thought he\'d heard: a horrified Maggie screaming Glenn\'s name.

That video\'s since been removed from YouTube... So make of that what you will.

Only two of the 11 potential victims are (probably) safe. Before he began the vicious beatdown, Negan warned: "Anybody moves, anything says anything – cut the boy\'s other eye out and feed it to his father."

...Which would seem to exclude Rick and Carl (Chandler Riggs), right?

Oh, and now the first season 7 trailer is out. Does it make things any clearer?

The Walking Dead season 7 spoilers: Negan and much more

"Season six ended on that note and season seven\'s going to pick up right where we left off," Jeffrey Dean Morgan confirmed back in April, insisting that there\'ll be no time jump to further draw the ire of fans.

even claimed that all 11 actors potentially on the chopping block have filmed their own death scene, in order to preserve the identity of the victim and "to give producers flexibility on which character to ultimately kill off.".

Though given the amount of time and money it would take to stage such a sideshow, this particular rumour feels a little dubious. Take with a pinch of salt...

One thing is for certain, though. Whoever the victim might be, don\'t expect

 from the one we are accustomed to," producer Greg Nicotero told Digital Spy in June, while series creator Robert Kirkman warned that Negan "is going to be an ever-present, constant threat that is going to change everything moving forward".

But there\'ll be more to next season than just Negan.

New ally Ezekiel – the charismatic leader of a community known as The Kingdom and keeper of a pet tiger named Shiva – is expected to join the show after the

comic\'s official Instagram appeared to confirm his debut in a (now deleted) post.

In fact, the TV series has already featured survivors from The Kingdom, with Morgan (Lennie James) and Carol (Melissa McBride) apparently encountering two of Ezekiel\'s troops in the season six finale.

In the comic books, Ezekiel pursues a romance with Michonne (Danai Gurira) – though given that the TV show has paired her off with Rick, it\'s doubtful the TV show will go down the same path.

For more details on what happens next in the 

comic books, you can check out our snappy synopsis right here – but bear in mind that it

The Walking Dead season 7 premiere: What\'s the air date and air time?

Going by its previous transmission pattern, and using some simple mathematics, we can even pin down a probable date of mid-October. (Spin-off show

And now AMC\'s confirmed that season 7 will indeed start with an 8-episode run on Sunday, October 23 at 9/8c. Just like previous years, expect two halves, with the second run of 8 episodes hitting the airwaves in February 2017

The Walking Dead season 7 cast: Who\'s coming back?

In July, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and three other cast members – Austin Amelio (Dwight), Tom Payne (Jesus) and Xander Berkeley (Gregory) - were promoted to series regular status.

now has a larger regular cast than at any previous point in its history – with 20 actors signed up to regular contracts.

...minus one, of course - once Negan\'s victim is revealed.

The Walking Dead season 8: How long will the show run?

Looking even further into the future, how long will

If you do the ratings maths, it\'s one of the most popular TV shows in the world right now... so it\'s no surprise that Greg Nicotero\'s insisting he and the creative team can "keep it going for as long as [they] want it go on".

"It continues to elicit emotion from the viewers," he told DS in June. "I know everybody has an idea about where it will end and I know that [creator] Robert Kirkman has said Rick will die – but eventually everyone will die, so who knows?"

It seems that, even once Negan\'s victim is revealed, the world of

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