The Walking Dead Showrunner Teases Maggie’s Role in Season 10 Finale and Season 11

There is “great stuff” planned for Maggie Rhee when Lauren Cohan returns to The Walking Dead, says showrunner Angela Kang. Maggie will appear for the first time in Season 10 in its currently postponed finale, “A Certain Doom,” where she unearths a letter penned by Carol (Melissa McBride) warning her about the Whisperers. Maggie learns the enemy group led by Alpha (Samantha Morton) murdered Enid (Katelyn Nacon), Jesus (Tom Payne) and Tara (Alanna Masterson) of Hilltop, Maggie’s home colony devastated days earlier in the first battle of the Whisperer War. She returns just as her surviving friends are engaged in their final battle with the Whisperers, now guided by a vengeful Beta (Ryan Hurst).

“We’ll see Maggie come into the show, and… there’s not much I can say without being spoiler-y,” Kang told ComicBook.com. “But Maggie is part of the heart of these people’s lives. There’s so much love for her within our communities, and she was a leader at a time when so much of the leadership at Hilltop had been lost.”

Cohan will appear as a guest star in the finale before she’s reinstated as a series regular in Season 11, currently being developed remotely amid the coronavirus crisis that has forced all three Walking Dead shows into various stages of delay.

“Even as we’re working on Season 11, we’ve got so much great stuff planned for her,” Kang said. “So I’m just excited for her to be back in the family and for us to do more great stuff with Maggie.”

Kang earlier revealed Maggie returns in the nick of time, hinting Maggie could play a role in helping rescue the survivors trapped inside a hospital tower surrounded by Beta’s walker horde.

Both Cohan and Negan actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan expect another clash between Maggie and Negan in Season 11 now that Negan is a free man, released from jail by Carol to infiltrate the Whisperers and kill Alpha. Negan served eight years of his life sentence for killing Glenn (Steven Yeun), Maggie’s husband and father of son Hershel, who will be around nine years old when we see him next.

“She’s one of the originals so it’s nice to have her back,” Daryl Dixon actor Norman Reedus told ComicBook.com at New York Comic Con, where Cohan first confirmed her return to the show. “I mean, there’s so many new cast members, it’s nice to get some of that, I don’t wanna say old energy ’cause she’s still a young lady, but to get some of that, you know, the feeling of that original crew together, because, I mean, this show started with magic, with that original cast and original crew. A lot of the original crew’s still there, but, I mean, we built this baby, you know what I mean? So it’s nice to have that energy back on set.”

The Walking Dead next airs “A Certain Doom” as a special episode later this year. For all things TWD, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.