'The Walking Dead' Season 8 may be making a big mistake with Negan

We're going to be learning a lot about Negan in Season 8 of The Walking Dead, whether we like it or not.

In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Jeffrey Dean Morgan reveals that the upcoming season of AMC's zombie hit will allow viewers to "start seeing slivers of who this guy is beyond the brutality that we saw in Season 7."

Morgan expresses hope that the show will eventually do a full backstory episode for the big bad, as The Walking Dead has previously done with some of its other heroes and villains. "I don’t know that that’s going to happen this year, but we are going to see enough of him and he talks quite a bit, as you know," he says. "So he’s going to reveal some of himself to the audience this year, which is going to be awesome."

That approach is part of a long-term plan for the bat-wielding psychopath, according to Morgan. "The most fascinating stuff that I’ve got to do this year is seeing behind the leather jacket a little bit. And we’ll find more. We’re finding more all the time, but I think the writers and [showrunner Scott M. Gimple] have a plan for Negan, and I’m really liking how it’s playing out thus far."

A villain's backstory can either be the most interesting thing about them, or the least. Darth Vader was terrifying when he was just a guy in a scary mask, but when we learned that he was Luke's father, it added a whole new layer of emotion to the Star Wars franchise. But then there's Batman's archnemesis, The Joker, who is terrifying precisely because his motivations are never clear and his "past" is impossible to pin down.

Fans of the comics know that Negan has a fairly tragic (and problematic) past -- albeit one that's compounded by his own selfishness and hubris -- but not every villain has to be relatable to work.

Historically, The Walking Dead's attempts to humanize their bad guys have tended to leave them toothless (zombies are scary precisely because you can't ascribe any kind of rationale to them). The more we learned about the Governor, the more his story bordered on melodrama -- and it would be especially egregious to try and redeem Negan now (as the comics are currently trying to do) after all the horrific things he's done to our heroes.

Negan might find his actions justifiable, and he should be able to justify his heinous actions to himself -- since every villain is the hero of their own story, as the well-worn saying goes -- but trying to gain the audience's sympathies after the guy caved in a father-to-be's skull for the sheer hell of it does a disservice to fans who cared about Glenn and Abraham and Sasha and all the other characters who Negan has gleefully tortured just to feel powerful.

So while we don't blame Morgan (or the writers, honestly) for wanting to develop Negan beyond the mustache-twirling caricature he currently is, this is one monster that should be left in the dark.

The Walking Dead Season 8 premieres Oct. 22 on AMC.