The Walking Dead writers’ room is developing Season 11, as teased in a photo published by writer and co-producer Kevin Deiboldt. Officially announced by network AMC in October ahead of the zombie drama’s Season 10 premiere, Season 11 brings back Maggie Rhee actress Lauren Cohan as a series regular and marks the third season under showrunner Angela Kang, who steered TWD to its best-reviewed seasons in series history. When Season 11 is released by the cabler in late 2020, the first half of its eleventh season will belong to an unprecedented 42 weeks of Walking Dead premieres when counting the sixth season of spinoff Fear the Walking Dead and the 10-episode first season of The Walking Dead: World Beyond.
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“We’re baaaaaack,” Deiboldt wrote on Twitter, attached to a picture of a notebook marked “TWD S11.” Deiboldt previously penned Season 10 Episode 6, “Bonds,” which teamed best friends Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride) on a risky mission tracking Alpha’s (Samantha Morton) walker horde while fugitive Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) attempted to earn his place among the Whisperers, against the misgivings of Beta (Ryan Hurst).
We’re baaaaaack… #TWD #Season11 pic.twitter.com/ADINMxqUAt
— Kevin Deiboldt 🧟 (@kdeiboldt) January 9, 2020
“The Walking Dead burst out of the gate ten years ago as a genre show that had all the character depth of a top-tier prestige drama,” Sarah Barnett, President of AMC Networks Entertainment Group & AMC Studios, said in a statement following the Season 11 renewal. “And now ten years later — led by the brilliant Angela Kang and fueled by one of the most consistently talented casts in television — this phenomenon is flourishing creatively, with critics and audiences embracing its reset. We’re delighted to welcome back Lauren Cohan, she has meant so much to this show and its passionate, global fanbase, who are in for a fantastic ride over the coming months.”
Season 11 will open a new chapter for the widowed Maggie, who quietly left Virginia with son Hershel sometime during the six-year time jump that followed the disappearance and presumed death of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln). Maggie has been off “someplace far” assisting Georgie (Jayne Atkinson) with a new community, but she’s expected to make her anticipated return in the back half of Season 10.
“We may see her at some other point this season, but I don’t want to say too much about anything,” Kang previously told Entertainment Weekly. “Maggie is a character that I’ve always loved writing for on the show. She’s a character that I thought was just so much fun in the comic book.”
Maggie has kept in touch via letter with the Alexandria and Hilltop communities, who are now embroiled in a deadly conflict with Alpha and the Whisperers — a terrifying enemy group that has already claimed the lives of Maggie’s former advisers, Jesus (Tom Payne) and Enid (Katelyn Nacon).
“The idea that Maggie’s kind of out there in the world up to things and that they’re thinking about her has been seeded in for a while,” added Kang. “So she’s definitely on our characters’ minds as they’re dealing with all this stuff going on and realizing that some of the people that are really capable and wonderful that they love are just out there and inaccessible to them at the moment.”
It remains to be seen if Maggie will get the opportunity to reunite — and perhaps reconcile — with Michonne (Danai Gurira), currently away at sea in search of weapons needed to combat a walker horde that threatens to destroy everything the survivors fought to build.
The Walking Dead Season 10 returns with new episodes Feb. 23 on AMC. For more TWD intel, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.
