Unlike HBO's Game of Thrones, AMC's The Walking Dead will seemingly never have to worry about the TV series potentially catching up to Robert Kirkman's comic books. Last week, the 156th issue of the comic was released, and the Season 6 finale essentially caught the show up to the 102nd issue, just after the iconic Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) was introduced. While no official plot details or footage for Season 7 have been released yet, there have been plenty of rumors about certain characters that will be introduced this fall, and now we can add another name to the list, which may be quite surprising for regular readers of the comics. There will be spoilers for both Season 6 of The Walking Dead and the most recent comic below, so read on at your own risk.

Shortly after Negan's introduction in the comics, where he kills Glenn Rhee (Steven Yeun) with his barbed-wire baseball bat dubbed Lucille, we meet a character named Ezekiel, the leader of a group known as The Kingdom. While this character hasn't been cast yet, as far as we know, there have been plenty of rumors that we could see Ezekiel very soon in Season 7, but during an interview with ComicBook.com, series star Norman Reedus offered a cryptic hint that another villain, Alpha, leader of The Whisperers, may surface this season. Here's what he had to say.

"There's different worlds now. There's different characters. There's a change of power on the show. Negan coming in has flipped our whole script so to speak. We are no longer the Alpha right now. It's a new world. It's a new, dangerous world in a different way now."

Of course, it could just be coincidence that Norman Reedus specifically used the word Alpha in this interview, but the timing is quite interesting, since last week's aforementioned comic book issue of The Walking Dead featured Negan killing Alpha. If Alpha does surface this season, it would be quite early, since this character doesn't surface until the 132nd issue of Robert Kirkman's comic book series. Her group, The Whisperers, are quite unique, using the skin of "walkers" both to disguise themselves from humans, and repel attacks from the real walkers. We've seen Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his crew use zombie guts spread over their clothing to get through a horde of walkers without being harmed, but The Whisperers takes that tactic to a whole new level.

While Alpha's introduction may be far too early, the show has often diverged from the source material. For instance, Laurie Holden's character Andrea is still alive in the comics, but she was killed off at the end of Season 3. In Season 6, Dr. Denise Cloyd (Merrit Wever) was killed off in a scene where, in the comics, Abraham Ford (Michael Cudlitz) is murdered. Of course, the biggest change could come in the Season 7 premiere, when we learn if Negan kills Glenn Rhee as he does in the comics, or if he killed a different person. With the show's cast and producers arriving at Comic-Con next week, we'll find out much more about this season then, so stay tuned.