Lauren Cohan Says Her New Walking Dead Series Is an Intimate, Layered Story

The Walking Dead may have concluded its 11-season run on Sunday night, but for several characters the story continues in upcoming spinoff series. Among those spinoffs is The Walking Dead: Dead City, which will see Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) as they go to a post-apocalyptic Manhattan, a place cut off from the mainland a long time ago. Now, Cohan explains a bit about what fans can expect from the series, calling it an intimate and layered story.

Speaking with ComicBook.com‘s Brandon Davis at The Walking Dead finale event, Cohan said that she was excited to get to continue with Maggie’s story and while she couldn’t tease much about Dead City, she did speak of the series’ emotional depths.

“It’s totally exciting, but I would have been really ready for anything because obviously we had a very good long stretch but to be honest with you, as we got further along in the series in the last few seasons, I felt really interested in the turns that my character was able to take and the things that the writers were giving her as potential roads to travel,” Cohan said. “So, when we knew that there was going to be a spinoff it just felt exciting. I’m excited to do it. It’s a very intimate layered type of story. And it’s going to be fun, I think, to go to these emotional depths with a smaller group the way we’ll get to in Dead City.”

What was Maggie’s fate in The Walking Dead finale?

After making peace with Negan by accepting his apology for murdering her husband Glenn but telling him that she would never forgive him, Maggie and her son Hershel returned to their home at the Hilltop colony, rebuilt anew for the peaceful life she once knew on the Greene family farm. At the memorial garden where Glenn is laid to rest, Maggie was hopeful and looking forward to the future. She told Daryl and Carol: “There’s a lot out there to find out about, and I think it’s time we did.”

What is The Walking Dead: Dead City about?

Dead City was first announced in March as Isle of the Dead. The spinoff follows Maggie and Negan into “a post-apocalyptic Manhattan long ago cut off from the mainland,” per the official synopsis “The crumbling city is filled with the dead and denizens who have made New York City their own world full of anarchy, danger, beauty, and terror.”

“I would describe Dead City as a new kind of danger,” Cohan teased in a behind-the-scenes sneak peek from the New York City-set Maggie and Negan spin-off. After seasons spent in rural Georgia, Virginia, and Ohio, Morgan said, “We’re getting out of the woods and into New York City, which has been really fun.” 

The cast of the series includes Gaius Charles (Grey’s Anatomy) as Perlie Armstrong, Karina Ortiz (Orange Is the New Black) as Amaia, Mahina Napoleon (NCIS: Hawai’i) as Ginny, Jonathan Higginbotham (The Blacklist) as Tommaso, Trey Santiago-Hudson (New Amsterdam) as Jano, and Zeljko Ivanek (Madam Secretary) as “The Croat.” 

The six-episode first season of TWD: Dead City premieres April 2023 on AMC and AMC+.