'The Walking Dead' Recap: A Major Character Dies in the Finale

— -- (SPOILERS AHEAD) After weeks of teasing, Sunday night's season 6 finale of "The Walking Dead" finally introduced the graphic novel's biggest and baddest of the series' big bads: Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). And as it did in the comics, this spelled very bad things for Rick and company.

The episode opened with Morgan on the hunt for Carol. Along the way, he comes across a horse: one that was lost in the last episode.

The injured Savior is also closing in on Carol, too.

Back in Alexandria, some of the gang are saddling up to take Maggie to the OB at the Hilltop compound. Enid wants to go, but Carl locks her in a closet for safekeeping.

Meanwhile, a pack of Saviors are hunting down a man who claims to be the last survivor of a library refuge. They beat him down and take him captive.

At Alexandria, Fr. Gabriel volunteers to hold down the fort; Rick leaves him in charge while he, Abraham, Aaron, Carl and Sasha roll in the RV to take Maggie to Hilltop.

Morgan finds Carol in a heap, exhausted and injured. "I told you not to follow me," she insists weakly. They find the abandoned library where Morgan patches her up, but she refuses his advice to go back with her. Going back means she'll be forced, again, to kill for someone she cares about.

Rick and his gang pull up on the Saviors, who block a road to Hilltop, using the librarian they captured as a line in the sand. Both Rick's gang and the saviors refuse to yield. Rick's RV backs away. Eugene finds them another route.

Meanwhile, a recovering Carol tells Morgan why she can't go back; she pulls a gun on him to prove how serious she is.

Rick's crew runs into another Savior roadblock. Again, Rick refuses to fight; the odds are too great. They back away. Morgan goes to deal with a walker hanging by the neck. And in the meantime, Carol splits. Morgan takes off on horseback to find her.

Another road, another roadblock; this time, walkers chained together. They're dressed deliberately in Daryl and Michonne's clothes -- one even has one of Michonne's dreadlocks stuck to its head.

It's a distraction Rick falls for -- and an ambush. Gunmen open up from both sides. Rick chops some walker arms to break the chain as his team lays down cover fire. Impossibly, they're able to drive away. Rick figures they were allowed to escape: they're being funneled.

Another road, another block -- even more Saviors.

Meanwhile, Carol finds a walker or two; locking one in a dumpster and grappling with another. She kills it after a struggle -- only to be knocked down by the Savior who'd been chasing her.

He insists he wants to watch her die slow, like his friends she killed. He shoots her in the arm. At the end of her rope, mentally, Carol laughs. "What's wrong with you?" the incredulous Savior asks. "I'm gonna die, so there's nothing wrong with me anymore," she says.

He shoots her in the leg. He turns back to finish the job, and Morgan appears and pulls on him. He pleads with the Savior to move on, he refuses -- and Morgan proves Carol right: Zenned out Morgan shoots him dead to protect his friend.

That's when he finds new allies; men dressed like knights but in BMX armor. They take his hand and offer Carol help.

Meanwhile, another roadblock for team Rick -- this one traps them past an underpass, blocking the way with flaming logs. The Saviors drop the library survivor off the overpass, a noose around his neck. Rick's gang watches helplessly as he dies.

Eugene steps up and takes the RV to fool the Saviors, while Rick and company dismount and head to Hilltop on foot, with Maggie on a stretcher. In short order, however, they get surrounded by whistling Saviors -- dozens of them -- as well as Eugene and the now-captured RV.

Rick and company get disarmed, and brought to their knees, when they're reunited with the previously captured Glenn, Rosita and Michonne.

And that's when Negan shows up. In his hand is the barbed-wire-studded bat he calls Lucille.

After playing "Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe," Negan executes somebody by bludgeoning them -- but we don't know who, and won't until "The Walking Dead" returns this fall on AMC.

Did you watch? What did you think of the finale?