Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

The Walking Dead adds four new series regulars to season seven

By Mike Flacy Updated July 8, 2016

negan

Making the jump from supporting characters to series regulars, four actors have been added to the large cast that makes up the popular AMC zombie drama. Actors added as series regulars include Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Tom Payne, Austin Amelio and Xander Berkeley. Seen for the first time in the season finale of season six, Morgan plays the charismatic villain known as Negan; a character likely to torment the core group of Walking Dead survivors for many episodes.

Payne is the character known as Jesus, a friend to Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and company. Amelio is Dwight, a character that’s currently in a feud with Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus). Berkeley plays Gregory, the leader of the Hilltop Colony first seen in season six as a potential trading partner to Alexandria.

While this brings the full cast of series regulars to twenty in total, it’s unlikely that number will stand after the first episode of season seven. As teased in the season finale cliffhanger of season six, Negan is expected to kill a minimum of one of the main characters with the weapon he calls Lucille, a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire.

Besides Lincoln and Reedus, other series regulars include Alanna Masterson (Tara), Austin Nichols (Spencer), Chandler Riggs (Carl), Christian Serratos (Rosita), Danai Gurira (Michonne), Josh McDermitt (Eugene), Lauren Cohan (Maggie), Lennie James (Morgan), Melissa McBride (Carol), Michael Cudlitz (Abraham), Ross Marquand (Aaron), Seth Gilliam (Father Gabriel), Sonequa Martin-Green (Sasha) and Steven Yeun (Glenn).

The Walking Dead is expected to return to AMC during October 2016. It’s possible that AMC will release a teaser trailer for the upcoming season during Comic-Con 2016 later this month. It’s likely that AMC will also announce casting for Ezekiel, the self-proclaimed king of another survivalist community in the Walking Dead universe called the Kingdom.

Topics

Contributing Editor

By day, I'm the content and social media manager for High-Def Digest, Steve's Digicams and The CheckOut on Ben's Bargains…

Entertainment

Tales of the Walking Dead enlists Terry Crews and others

Terry Crews looking bemused in an office in Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

AMC's The Walking Dead is wrapping up with its final season later this year, but zombies will never die! One of the next iterations of the franchise is the upcoming anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead. And the new show has added some very familiar faces to the cast.

Via Deadline, Terry Crews, Parker Posey, Anthony Edwards, Poppy Liu, and Jillian Bell have been lined up to appear in Tales of the Walking Dead season 1. Crews recently costarred in Brooklyn Nine-Nine for eight seasons, in addition to his roles in The Expendables films and hosting America's Got Talent. Posey's credits include Lost in Space and the upcoming HBO Max miniseries The Staircase. Edwards was one of the original stars of ER, and he has supporting roles in the upcoming limited series WeCrashed and Inventing Anna. Liu had a leading role in the sitcom Sunnyside and guest appearances on Better Call Saul and iCarly. Bell has headlined the film Brittney Runs a Marathon and the comedy series Godmothered.

Entertainment

The Walking Dead season 11, part 2 trailer aims to remake the world

The cast of The Walking Dead.

For nearly 12 years, The Walking Dead has been AMC's flagship series. However, the final season is raising questions about whether humanity can survive past the events of the zombie apocalypse. In the first trailer for The Walking Dead season 11, part 2, Norman Reedus' Daryl Dixon makes an impassioned plea to his fellow survivors. Daryl is questioning the need to kill each other in a world already poisoned by death. But a new war among the survivors appears to be inevitable.

Warning, spoilers ahead! AMC is releasing The Walking Dead season 11 in eight-episode installments, in a bid to keep the show around as long as possible. During the first part of the season, Eugene's group made their way to the Commonwealth, a supercolony that resembles life before zombies overran civilization. Unfortunately, the Commonwealth has a darker side that gets explored in the trailer. The Commonwealth provides a good life for anyone in a position of power. But anyone who causes too many waves will be cast out.

Entertainment

The Walking Dead is coming to an end, but its life lessons will stick around

Daryl leading the group in a scene from season 11 of The Walking Dead.

All it took was one brutal scene.

Fans of The Walking Dead had been gearing up for it for months, but when a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire brutally ended the story of one of the show's most beloved characters in October 2016, it became a turning point for both the post-apocalyptic drama's cast of characters and its longtime audience -- forcing many to consider whether the deeper issues explored by the series were worth the show's infamously gory violence.