'The Walking Dead': Tom Payne On Jesus And Maggie's Relationship

Though Maggie and Jesus had their differences in the first half of The Walking Dead Season Eight, [...]

Though Maggie and Jesus had their differences in the first half of The Walking Dead Season Eight, they will have to find a way to work together in the upcoming finale of the All Out War story.

The clash in their relationship began when Jesus elected to keep Savior prisoners alive. After all, these are the soldiers working for the man who killed Maggie's husband. He fed them Hilltop food and facilitated their imprisonment. With the war the war about to burst, ComicBook.com asked Jesus actor Tom Payne for a taste of what to expect between his and Lauren Cohan's character going forward. As it turns out, they have more in common than might meet the eye right now.

"I've always seen that relationship as very push and pull, like sibling, not rivalry, but brother/sister kind of relationship," Payne said. "I think that actually Maggie does think more along the lines of Jesus just normally, but she's struggling with the fact that her husband was brutally beaten to death in front of her. She knows the right thing to do and the humane thing to do, but also she's got this tremendous amount of anger inside of her for what happened and the sense of injustice that she feels about that, and why should she give these people justice when Glenn wasn't given any in her eyes? That's her struggle. I think Jesus sees who she was before Glenn's death and who she continues to be inside of herself, so he's appealing to that side of her and hoping that that's enough."

In the Mid-Season finale which aired back in December of 2017, Maggie crossed Jesus' line when she executed a Savior to send his body back to Negan as a message. "They're messing with her, right? Seeing her as weak and thinking that they could manipulate her or take her for a fool," Payne said. "For her, it was important to establish that you are dispensable and we will kill you if we need to. I think Jesus respects that as well. He understand there's a difference between killing one savior and killing all of them. Sometimes the point needs to be made."

Payne, however, points out a common theme of the show, which is the blurred lines between the good guys and the bad guys. "Interesting enough, that's a very Negan-like point that is made there," Payne says of Maggie's choice to kill a Savior. "'If you step out of line, then we kiil one of you.' That has actually just come into my head, but it is very Negan-like in that instance. The lines are continually blurred, and I think that's great. I think that's what the audience ... I always bring that up in questions and answers as well, because what makes us different? Why are we different from anyone else on the show? Well, it's just because the audience has followed us since the beginning, but really, Maggie shot that guy in the face. She didn't know who he was, never met him before. What's the difference, you know?

"That's a kind of interesting juxtaposition. But at that moment, yeah, Jesus understands that that's what she needed to do to assert herself. Also, I think he recognizes that it was something that should be done to quell any kind of uprising."

Following The Walking Dead's Mid-Season Eight premiere on Sunday night, ComicBook.com's After the Dead will be live to recap Chandler Riggs' final episode with executive producer Greg Nicotero and insight from Riggs himself at 10:22 pm ET on ComicBook NOW's Facebook page and ComicBook.com Orginals' YouTube channel.

The Walking Dead returns for the second half of its eighth season on February 25, 2018. Fear the Walking Dead will debut its fourth season after The Walking Dead concludes its eighth, at 10 pm ET on April 15. For complete coverage and insider info all year long, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter.

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