The Walking Dead’s Lauren Ridloff Addresses Connie’s Fate After Midseason Premiere

The Walking Dead star Lauren Ridloff addresses what’s next for Connie and Magna (Nadia Hilker) after the midseason premiere, “Squeeze,” which ended with the two heroes trapped beneath a mound of rubble. Connie and Magna were just feet away from making it out of the cave that held Daryl (Norman Reedus), Carol (Melissa McBride), Aaron (Ross Marquand), Jerry (Cooper Andrews), and Connie’s sister, Kelly (Angel Theory), when Carol’s attempt to take out half the walker horde gathered by Alpha (Samantha Morton) didn’t go as planned: the mine tunnel used by the others to escape collapsed when it was rocked by exploding dynamite, leaving Connie and Magna entombed.

“First of all, please don’t riot. No riots. Don’t send letters to AMC complaining about what you may see here tonight,” Ridloff said through an ASL interpreter on Talking Dead. “But we don’t know what happens. It’s very nerve-racking. We’re just going to have to keep watching, right? And keep our fingers crossed.”

An in memoriam aired during Talking Dead did not include Connie or Magna.

How or if Connie and Magna escape is a question for a later episode this half-season, but there remains the matter of unexplored Connie backstory hinted at in Season 9 episode “The Calm Before.” In a conversation with Kelly following Connie’s daring rescue of an abandoned Whisperer baby outside Hilltop, we learned of a past trauma that so far hasn’t been disclosed to audiences.

Ridloff previously told TV Guide ahead of the Season 9 finale she is “intrigued to see where they’re actually going to go with my character” in future episodes. Such future directions could include a potential romantic relationship with Daryl, who has since learned ASL to better communicate with Connie.

“I don’t know,” she answered TV Guide in March 2019 when asked if ‘Donnie’ might turn romantic. “I can say that they definitely have a lot in common. They both don’t really speak that much. And they both are very strong leaders. They both are very loyal. They will do anything to protect the people that they care about. So I think they definitely have those things in common. Friends or more than that? Who knows! You’ll just have to keep watching.”

Whatever happens next, it’s all required viewing straight through April’s Season 10 finale.

“I’ll say as a preview to getting towards the end, it gets really important to watch every episode, because as we get closer and closer to the finale, things of massive importance happen in every episode moving forward for now,” showrunner Angela Kang told Entertainment Weekly. “There is some stuff that could feel like a finale, smack in the middle of the run of the back half. So there’s some cool stuff.”

In season finale, which borrows its worrisome name from a volume of the comic, Kang said, “There’s some really big emotional important things that happen, as well as some new stuff, which will hopefully be surprising for people.”

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