Spoilers for The Walking Dead Season Seven premiere below.

After months of anticipation, we finally know which Walking Dead character ended up on the receiving end of Negan's barbed-wire baseball bat in the Season Six finale. After counting eeny-meeny-miney-moe, Negan landed on Abraham, the square-jawed tough guy played by Michael Cudlitz. But that wasn't the end of the show's horrors. When Darryl attempted to strike back at Negan, the villain decided he needed to make an even stronger impression, and chose a second victim: Glenn Rhee, the fan-favorite character played by Steven Yeun.

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Steven Yeun was one of The Walking Dead's longest-tenured cast members, hailing all the way back to the show's pilot, when he rescued Rick Grimes from a zombie horde in the middle of Atlanta. And while Glenn's onscreen death was nearly a shot-for-shot version of a shocking and gruesome moment from the original comics, its impact remained viscerally horrifying as translated onto television, as the beloved character was casually beaten into a pile of blood and guts by Negan while the show's other characters watched helplessly.

Now that The Walking Dead's biggest secret is finally out in the open, how does Negan's victim feel about his sendoff? Less than an hour after appearing live on a special 90-minute episode of Talking Dead, Steven Yeun spoke exclusively to GQ.com about his final episode of The Walking Dead.

I'm sure it's been an emotional night. How do you feel right now?

To be quite honest? I feel relieved. We've known for so long, and in this day and age—with how social media works, and how people get information in an instant—it’s harder to keep secrets. That was eating away at me more than anything.

When did you find out that Glenn would be Negan's ultimate victim?

I actually found out at the beginning of Season Six. I knew that it was coming eventually, and I was excited about it. I obviously didn't want to leave the show, and didn't want to leave the wonderful people on it. But it was such an iconic moment, and a death that I couldn't let go to anybody else. If it was designated for Glenn, I really wanted to experience it.

The 100th issue of The Walking Dead, in which Glenn is beaten to death in a nearly identical manner, was published all the way back in 2012. Do you feel like you've been preparing for this moment for four years?

Obviously, you get all the people saying, "Hey, did you read Issue 100? Ohhhhhhhh." [laughs] I saw what it could be [when the comic was published]—but I absolutely did not know if it would actually happen. Getting closer to Season Six, [Walking Dead showrunner Scott Gimple] always has meetings with the actors. And I kind of felt like it was the time for this to happen. I'm sure more of Glenn's story could have been told, but I also see this as the encapsulation of the current story. And Glenn has been able to do so many different things that it also felt appropriate to end it there.

You've been playing Glenn since 2010. Has it been hard to let him go?

I wouldn’t say it was hard, but it's been affecting, to recap everything I've been through. It was less about losing that character, per se, and more about all the things I got to experience while playing this character. It wasn't hard to let go of the character. I'm saying that now. But I might be crying tomorrow. Who knows? [laughs]