When Does Maggie Return to The Walking Dead?

It will be a little while longer before Lauren Cohan‘s Maggie Rhee returns to The Walking Dead. The Hilltop leader left the farming colony with Hershel, the son she shares with late husband Glenn (Steven Yeun), some time during the mostly unseen six-year period that followed the presumed death of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) in Season 9 episode 5, “What Comes After,” currently Maggie’s last appearance. In Season 9 episode 7, “Stradivarius,” Siddiq (Avi Nash) informed Michonne (Danai Gurira) Maggie went “someplace far” helping Georgie (Jayne Atkinson), a mysterious benefactor who previously traded the Hilltop colony a “key to the future,” to help with a new community.

Maggie will return in “A Certain Doom,” the original Season 10 finale scheduled to air Sunday, April 12, before the Greg Nicotero-directed episode was indefinitely postponed amid the coronavirus crisis. The season’s penultimate episode, Sunday’s “The Tower,” acts as the Season 10 closer until “A Certain Doom” can air sometime later this year as a special episode after the required post-production work is completed.

Carol (Melissa McBride) and the other survivors have penned letters to Maggie about recent events, but those letters have gone without response in recent months. The Hilltop leader has been away during the entirety of the conflict against the Whisperers, commanded first by Alpha (Samantha Morton) and then Beta (Ryan Hurst), skin-wearing psychopaths whose people have killed Enid (Katelyn Nacon) and interim Hilltop leaders Jesus (Tom Payne) and Tara (Alanna Masterson), among others.

Showrunner Angela Kang earlier confirmed Cohan will appear before the end of Season 10, teasing Maggie returns in the nick-of-time. “The Tower” ended with Beta marching his walker horde onto the abandoned hospital tower hiding evacuees from the Hilltop, Oceanside, and Alexandria communities, including Alpha’s daughter, ex-Whisperer Lydia (Cassady McClincy), Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam), Jules (Alex Sgambati) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).

Cohan stepped away from The Walking Dead to headline new series Whiskey Cavalier, the ABC spy dramedy cancelled before the finish of its first season. Despite Cohan’s absence, Kang and executive producer Scott Gimple, also Walking Dead chief content officer, have long planned for Maggie to re-enter the story.

“Even when she was leaving for the other show, it was always like the conversation was Lauren wanted to spread her wings but the door was always open for her to return,” Kang previously told Deadline, adding both parties were “having conversations for a long time.”

Cohan’s return was a matter of both sides working out scheduling, “and it finally worked out.”

“Everybody’s really happy that she’s coming back because we love Lauren, and she brings a lot to the show,” Kang said. “Even when she left, she’s been in contact with everybody, and it’s been great. I’m just excited to kind of write her next chapter because she’s just a lovely human being and a really compelling character, too, I think.”

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.