The Walking Dead: When Does Maggie Return?

The Walking Dead is officially returning for the back half of its tenth season on Sunday night, prompting a popular question amongst fans: When is Maggie going to come back to the AMC zombie show? Lauren Cohan departed The Walking Dead temporarily in its ninth season, quietly exiting in the same Episode 9×05 as Rick Grimes actor Andrew Lincoln. At New York Comic Con in October of 2019, Cohan and showrunner Angela Kang finally made it official that Cohan would be reprising her role as Maggie after the actress had a brief stint on a popular Whiskey Cavalier show. So, is Maggie in the midseason ten premiere? No.

Cohan will appear on the AMC show late in its tenth season, taking on a bigger role in Season 11. It will be a brief appearance in the tenth season but an exciting one for fans of the expanding universe, nonethless.

On the show, Maggie left her post as leader of the Hilltop in favor of heading north with Georgie. While Georgie’s community has not been named on the show, it is largely suspected that Jayne Atkinson’s character is the TV version of governor Pamela Milton, the leader of the Commonwealth community in The Walking Dead comics. Easter eggs referencing the Commonwealth have already appeared in the TV show and with another casting announcement from New York Comic Con, it appears the journey to that location is not far off.

“We will hopefully come back to Maggie’s story in Season 10,” Kang told ComicBook.com in November of 2018 — nearly an entire year before officially announcing the return. “Lauren and I have been texting about some things, and we’re hopefully gonna schedule a conversation, but Georgie’s group is definitely out there in world doing some stuff, and I have some notion of what they’re up to. They may also be part of the universe in general. That’s really up to Scott, but we’ll see how it all plays out.”

Watch the clever announcement of Maggie’s return at Madison Square Garden during New York Comic Con in the video from the tweet below!

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The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9pm ET on AMC.