TWD: Dead City Showrunner Previews Maggie and Negan's Next Chapter

Grief. Loss. Trauma. Those are the three words series creator and showrunner Eli Jorné uses to describe what's at the core of the relationship between Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) on The Walking Dead: Dead City, AMC's new spin-off series picking up years after the enemies-turned-allies reached a détente in The Walking Dead's series finale. Maggie told the contrite Negan that she could never forgive him for killing Glenn (Steven Yeun), even after he saved Glenn and Maggie's son Hershel Rhee (Kien Michael Spiller). "I don't want to hate you anymore," Maggie told Negan. "I don't want to hurt like that." 

But now, years later, that hurt resurfaces when a slightly older Hershel (a recast Logan Kim) is kidnapped by The Croat (Željko Ivanek). Maggie's mission to save her son brings her to walker-infested New York City — and back to Negan.

"This is the next chapter in this story about Maggie and Negan. Another piece of it for me was what's at the core of Maggie and Negan's relationship — the grief, and loss, and trauma," Jorné remarked during Dead City's WonderCon panel. "How do you navigate something like that? To me, that was always the center of the show. That's at the core here."

While The Walking Dead "did such an amazing job" exploring the Maggie and Negan dynamic, the flagship had to service another dozen-plus characters. In the more intimate Dead City, "We get to really zero in and peel away all these layers and go deeper and deeper and challenge the characters [of Maggie and Negan]."

Said Cohan, "We see a very unprocessed level of trauma that we know happened between Maggie and Negan. In Dead City, we really get a chance to [ask], 'What is this? What does it take to move through it?' And more than anything, it's a chance for us to be forced together on this mission."

"The tension and unmovable things are still very present," Cohan continued. "We've seen them intersect so often, but in this show, it's really this tunnel that they're trapped in to face things they may have run away from, more so what Maggie has run away from and what Negan brings up for her. It's like an exercise in intimacy with the worst person."

Joining returning Walking Dead stars Cohan and Morgan are franchise newcomers Gaius Charles (Grey's Anatomy) as New Babylon Marshal Perlie Armstrong, Željko Ivanek (Damages) as The Croat, Mahina Napoleon (NCIS: Hawai'i) as Ginny, Jonathan Higginbotham (The Blacklist) as Tommaso, Trey Santiago-Hudson (New Amsterdam) as Jano, and Michael Anthony (The Game) as Luther.

The Walking Dead: Dead City premieres Sunday, June 18th, at 10 p.m. ET on AMC and AMC+ following Fear the Walking Dead. New episodes will air Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC and AMC+.

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