'The Walking Dead' showrunner says they've been trying to do a 'Here's Negan' episode for years

• Warning: There are spoilers ahead for season 10, episode 22 of "The Walking Dead," "Here's Negan."
• Showrunner Angela Kang tells Insider this is an episode they considered doing for years.

Sunday's final bonus episode of "The Walking Dead's" 10th season, "Here's Negan," has been years in the making.

Based on Robert Kirkman's graphic novel of the same name, the "TWD" one-off, gives fans a backstory to the show's love-him-or-hate-him former antagonist, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).

One of six episodes shot during the pandemic, the series brought on Morgan's real-life wife, Hilarie Burton, to play the role of Negan's spouse, Lucille. The result is fireworks.

What we get is one of the best episodes of the series we've seen in a long time.

It turns out Negan was always kind of a jerk of sorts, cheating on his wife with her friend and trash-talking kids while playing video games with them. Funny enough, it took the zombie apocalypse to actually make Negan into a somewhat better man - for a while anyway - until he lost Lucille to cancer. Negan then reverted into an even darker version of his pre-apocalypse self to become the cocky, bat-wielding chatterbox who turned Rick's life upside down.

Showrunner Angela Kang told Insider they've been interested in bringing the "Here's Negan" story to life since its release, but could never find the right place to fit it into the narrative.

That's a shame because delivering Negan's backstory a little earlier may have helped show-only fans better understand the very complex and flawed character during a time when many fans felt like "TWD" was becoming, more or less, the Negan show.

Insider caught up with Kang to discuss bringing the graphic novel to life, casting Burton to play Lucille, and what the show's departure from the "Walking Dead" comic means for Negan's future on the show and his rocky relationship with Maggie (Lauren Cohan).

They were thinking about adapting "Here's Negan" since it came out in 2017

Kirsten Acuna: This is a great episode. Easily the best of the six. I'd go as far to say that I enjoyed this episode more than the actual "Here's Negan" story. And I really liked that. How long have you been considering adapting the 2017 graphic novel? Did you speak with ["TWD" creator Robert] Kirkman about adapting this at all and making changes to the story?

Kang: We've been wanting to do a version of "Here's Negan" on the show for years, but we've never found an organic place to slot it until now. If you're going into the past on our show, there's a reason why. It has to tie to the present or the future, or at least, that's kind of my rule for trying to do it. So it felt like it worked in terms of, he's reflecting on who he was because he's at a crossroads in terms of his current place in the society. Who does he want to be? And what does it mean that Maggie's back? There's that task to grapple with. So, it's definitely been something that we've thought about, but we never knew exactly what form it was going to take or where it would land, until now.

I didn't really talk directly to Kirkman about it. He always gives us very wide latitude, but will tell us if he reads something and goes, "Ah, I'm not sure about this." But, he's so cool as a creator. I felt like we were being very true to the spirit of the graphic novel even though we made changes. A lot of the changes came about because we had done so many pieces of the story from a comic book, in dialogue at various points. We're like, "OK. Well, what is there that's new to show and say?" That's why we kind of focused on the actual relationship with Lucille and really making a change to the timeline of when that happened so that there were just these incredible stakes for him going forward.

Acuna: When you say you've been thinking about this for years, do you mean maybe season eight? When I watched this episode, I wished we had an episode like this earlier.

Kang: I can't remember if we talked about it in season eight. That was when Scott [Gimple] was running the show. We had been talking about "Here's Negan" since the comic came out. We're like, well, we got to figure out how to work this in. But, once you're kind of in the forward moving plot, it became hard to find the right spot for it. But, I hear what you're saying. Sometimes it's nice to know a bit more about the character, but I think we were so much in our people's point of view that year that it was hard.

Casting Hilarie Burton as Lucille was something discussed before the pandemic

Acuna: I love the casting of Hilarie Burton as Lucille. We don't really see her in the comic at all, other than in her final moments. Were you always considering Jeffrey Dean Morgan's real life partner for the role or did that really come about because of the pandemic?

Kang: Scott Gimple and I had talked about it for a while, definitely pre COVID. There's obviously some advantages to being able to have both of them be very comfortable with the intimate moments during COVID. But that was something we had kind of brewing as a possibility for a long time. It just felt like they would have the perfect dynamic together. And I think she was wonderful.

'TWD' brought Negan out of exile, changing a major plot point in the comics, to continue his 'unresolved tension' with Maggie

Acuna: At the end of the episode, Negan returns to Alexandria. In the comics, Negan stays an exile for about the final 20 issues of "The Walking Dead" comic. I think I always felt a little robbed of some story there. What went into bringing him back out of exile? I have to imagine it's because you have this unresolved tension with Maggie.

Kang: Yeah. I think that there is an unresolved tension with Maggie and having them in story together, I think is going to be really interesting. It's important to kind of work that out. For Negan, I think he's at a place where he feels like, "Haven't I earned a spot?" and I think that that's kind of part of what his reflecting on his life is telling him like, "Oh man, it's been easier for me at times to avoid the hard things." For me, it'd be easy to be out here in exile. It's harder to kind of go back and face the wife of the person that I beat down and to figure out how to move forward with my life. You know? So I think that that's just an important part of the development for both of those characters, for Negan on his side, and for Maggie, who has to decide whether forgiveness is truly possible for her, with him.

Where this leaves Maggie and Negan going into season 11: It's not great right now

Acuna: I was a little surprised we didn't get some sort of interaction or conversation between Maggie and Negan. We see the looks, but I thought by the end of the episode, he was maybe ready to go up to Maggie and say, "Hey, if we're both going to be here, we should have a conversation." But, I guess nothing is ever that simple with Negan. Where does that leave us with the two of them heading into season 11? Where is Negan's headspace? Is he going to try and patch things up and be the man who Lucille said she knew he could be?

Kang: So, it means that at the start of season 11, things are really tense, but they're still going to have to be in story together and work together. The funny thing is we originally scripted a conversation for them in [season 10, episode 17] "Home Sweet Home." But when we got [the episode] back, the editor was like, "Take a look at this without any of the words." We wound up with him just talking to her and her just looking at him and actually it just was even that much more powerful. We just felt like, Maggie is not yet at a point where she was going to initiate something with him. And I think he realizes, Carol has just said, "Well, she's going to kill you." So he's like, "All right, all in due time" is where he's left things at the end of this little block of episodes.

"The Walking Dead" will return to AMC for its final 11th season with eight new episodes starting on Sunday, August 22. You can follow along with our "TWD" coverage here.