Dead City: Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan Explain Maggie and Negan Walking Dead Spinoff (Exclusive)

A vendetta thought laid to rest on The Walking Dead is back from the grave as “old acquaintances” Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) return in The Walking Dead: Dead City. Sunday’s “Old Acquaintances” series premiere of the Maggie and Negan spin-off reunited the enemies years after they parted ways on The Walking Dead‘s “Rest in Peace” series finale, where Maggie told Negan she couldn’t forgive or forget what he did to Glenn (Steven Yeun): fatally bludgeoning her husband and the father of her child with his barbwire-covered baseball bat. 

Originally announced as Isle of the Dead, the new Walking Dead spin-off was among “three, maybe four options” for separate Maggie and Negan shows, Cohan previously told ComicBook.

Dead City forces Maggie and Negan back together when the Croat (Željko Ivanek) — a psychopathic Savior who “stood out as being an exceptionally insane son of a bitch,” Negan recalls — kidnaps Maggie’s son, Hershel (Logan Kim). With Negan wanted by New Babylon Marshal Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles) for murdering a magistrate and four other men, he agrees to a quid pro quo with Maggie: he’ll travel with her into walker-infested New York City to save Hershel from the Croat’s new “Sanctuary,” and she shelters his unspeaking ward, Ginny (Mahina Napoleon), at her home at The Bricks (a relocated Hilltop community).

“When [Walking Dead Universe chief content officer and executive producer] Scott [Gimple] came to us, we’ve sort of talked to him a few times about possible iterations of a spinoff. And then this sort of cinched in us in New York City on a mission, an undeniable mission,” Cohan told ComicBook. “That was going to allow us to look at these two people and really dig into [their dynamic]. That was really exciting to us because it’s almost like they take one mini step backward in order to say, ‘How do you really solve this? How do you really look at why they bring up what they bring up?’ And I think to have the familiarity with us, and then to take it and thrust it into New York City, it just sounded like it was going to be a pretty good time.”

Added Morgan, “There were a few options that they approached both Lauren and I with as far as spinoffs. Because they were interested in doing spinoffs for these two characters, but not necessarily together. And then when [series creator and showrunner] Eli [Jorné] came up with the idea of putting Maggie and Negan in a show together — look, I think we were both very skeptical. ‘How would that go? That’s not going to work at all.’”

Jorné researched real-life stories of forgiveness to explore the themes of grief, and loss, and trauma that have tethered Maggie and Negan since he killed Glenn in The Walking Dead season 7 episode, “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be.”

“We saw an outline and it was really kind of amazing. And we’ve spent so much time kind of tiptoeing around these two’s relationship for years and never really digging into it, to then put them in this new location that is New York City and have them have to deal with each other. There is no escaping thefact that they are on screen 99% of the time together and they’re going to have to figure this out — or not, I should say — because we find them in a worse position than we left them. We left them with a truce of sorts. And then when Maggie needs Negan, she needs him, but she comes at him hard. She’s not asking a favor, like, ‘Can you help me here?’ She’s kind of an ass about it. And Negan kind of is like, ‘Okay, I’m going to go with this,’ because maybe he can get something out of it too.”

When Maggie last saw Negan, he was expecting a child with his pregnant wife, Annie (Medina Senghore). What happened to Negan’s wife and child will be answered in future episodes, but for now, Maggie is able to leverage harboring Ginny to coax Negan into accompanying her into Manhattan to rescue her son from the Croat.

Asked if Negan helps Maggie if there’s nothing in it for him, Morgan said, “I think he may very well help her. I think he would’ve had an issue more with the approach, but I think he may have helped her.”

“I think that there is always going to be a guilt that Negan has, especially when it comes to Hershel, more so than Maggie probably, because Negan does have this affinity toward the younger generation. And we had a couple scenes with Hershel the last year of [The Walking Dead] that were very brief, but they were cool and there was something there that kind of opened a door for this weird relationship,” Morgan explained. “And I think Negan would want to bring him home, especially knowing that the Croat has him, who is the man that he has a past with. So maybe, I think there’s a very good chance that he wouldn’t have just said ‘f— you’ to Maggie and would’ve probably helped. But Maggie likes to use things to her advantage, and if that means having him over a barrel, she’s going to use it, and she’s no dummy.” 

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Dead City premiere Thursdays on AMC+ and Sundays on AMC. Read our Dead City Season 1 Episode 1 recap.

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