The Walking Dead Showrunner Reveals Spoilery Tease About Maggie’s Return Later in Season 10B

The Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang has revealed a spoilery hint ahead of the confirmed late Season 10 return of Lauren Cohan‘s Maggie Rhee. The Hilltop colony leader quietly left Virginia some time during the six-year time skip that followed the disappearance and presumed death of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), a revelation Michonne (Danai Gurira) learned from Siddiq (Avi Nash) in Season 9 episode “Stradivarius.” As Siddiq told it, Maggie took her and Glenn’s (Steven Yeun) young son, Hershel, and went “someplace far” with benefactor Georgie (Jayne Atkinson), “helping her with a new community,” which should factor into the upcoming Season 11.

When taking over the official Walking Dead Instagram page ahead of the midseason 10 premiere, showrunner Angela Kang was asked to tease Maggie’s return with just one word. Kang’s response: “Nick-of-time (does that count?!)”

The midseason premiere ended with two of our heroes still in peril: while Daryl (Norman Reedus), Carol (Melissa McBride), Aaron (Ross Marquand), Kelly (Angel Theory), and Jerry (Cooper Andrews) managed to escape the cave where they were swarmed by Whisperer leader Alpha’s (Samantha Morton) walker horde, Connie (Lauren Ridloff) and Magna (Nadia Hilker) were still inside when a stick of dynamite exploded, bringing down a mine shaft around them.

In the wake of the explosion, Kelly pointed out the blast would “call walkers and Whisperers from a hundred miles from here.” Could Maggie come back in the “nick-of-time” for a last-minute save?

“There are two people that got buried within the cave, whether alive or dead, our people don’t know,” Kang told Insider. “That triggers the next set of adventures for Daryl where he, on the search, is going to find some things that are unexpected. And I think emotionally, for our characters, just the question of whether they’re alive or dead really has a lot of impact on them going forward. We will eventually find out the fate of Magna and Connie. But in the meantime, there’s a lot of our characters such as Carol, who are living with the guilt, or people who are activated to try to find them, or just deal with the emotional fallout from it.”

Might Maggie’s return be tied to the coming Whisperer War? In the comic books, Maggie and her child are present when the Hilltop comes under fiery attack from Whisperers slinging flaming arrows. This battle is expected to get underway as soon as episode 1011, “Morning Star.”

New episodes of The Walking Dead Season 10 premiere Sundays on AMC. For more TWD, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.