How Maggie Returns to The Walking Dead Is a Spoiler

The Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang can divulge little about the looming return of Lauren Cohan's Maggie in one of the last remaining episodes of Season 10, saying the way Maggie re-enters the show is "just too spoilery." The Hilltop leader has been away since Season 9 episode "What Comes After," the exit episode for Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes and the last taking place before a six-year time jump. As Siddiq (Avi Nash) explained in Season 9 episode "Stradivarius," sometime over those six years Maggie and son Hershel left Hilltop, going "someplace far" to help Hilltop benefactor Georgie (Jayne Atkinson) with a new community.

"I mean she's coming back. It's so funny, but I really can't say anything about her coming back because it's just too spoilery, but you know we are really happy that Lauren's coming back," Kang told Deadline. "We had always been planning to have her come back somehow and we were working on timing, like you know as we've been saying. It all finally worked out and we're really excited that she's back, and we're deep in planning her next story for Season 11."

As revealed during her surprise appearance at New York Comic Con in October, Cohan will reappear in one of the three episodes left in Season 10 before rejoining as a series regular in Season 11.

"Actually, I just spoke with her on the phone the other day, she's such a lovely, lovely person," Kang said of Cohan, who also boarded the zombie drama in its second season. "We're just really happy to have her back in the fold, and I think we'll tell some really fun stories with her."

Ahead of the midseason 10 premiere in February, which ended with Connie (Lauren Ridloff) and Magna (Nadia Hilker) trapped in a cave teeming with walkers, Kang teased Maggie would return in the nick-of-time. In "Walk With Us," it was learned Connie and Magna managed to escape, only to be separated by a deluge of walkers and Whisperers.

Connie remains missing — Kang's way of accommodating Ridloff's scheduling conflicts with Marvel Studios' The Eternals — and whether or not Connie resurfaces with the returned Maggie, answers about her fate are on track to arrive before the end of the season.

Season 10 will end prematurely with its penultimate episode, 1015, "The Tower," due to the coronavirus pandemic making it impossible to complete post-production work on the season finale. The finale, "A Certain Doom," will air sometime later this year as a special episode.

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