The Walking Dead's Lynn Collins on Leah's Fate and Daryl Family Feud
Warning: this story contains spoilers for The Walking Dead, "No Other Way." All is fiery in love and war as exes Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Leah (Lynn Collins) collide in Sunday's explosive Season 11 return. Beginning where October's Part 1 finale ended — with Daryl and Leah's feuding families warring over Meridian — Sunday's Part 2 premiere pits the Alexandrians against the Reapers in their fight for food. Leah launched the hwacha's hundreds of rocket-powered arrows after killing Pope (Ritchie Coster) and siding with her "brothers" over Daryl, telling him in "For Blood": "You'd do anything to protect your family. So would I."
Leah also vowed to kill everything inside Meridian's walls, including Daryl's group: Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam), Elijah (Okea Eme-Akwari), and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). But when the Reaper leader finds herself outmanned and outgunned during a standoff, Leah accepts Daryl's deal to walk away without more bloodshed.
"You save your family," Leah tells Daryl, "I save mine."
After promising Elijah she would avenge their people, the Wardens, Maggie reneges on the deal and plunges a sickle into Carver's (Alex Meraz) chest. She guns down what's left of Leah's family, killing Washington (Ethan McDowell) and Boone (Zac Zedalis) before firing on a fleeing Leah.
Tracking the lone Leah outside Meridian's walls, Daryl tells his ex-girlfriend, "This is not what I wanted. You could've had a second chance. We both could have." With that, Daryl lets Leah go.
"We have this moment right now as we go into these new episodes where she just could have humbled herself and said, 'Okay, yeah, let's join. Let's get together. Let's join each other,'" Collins told ComicBook in an exclusive interview. "I think at this point in her mind, the way it at least is written, she really feels like she's been screwed over more than once. And I think there's nothing to lose, and because she has nothing to lose, she's really dangerous right now — more dangerous than she's really ever been."
Trailers for the second part of the season confirm Leah will return somewhere down the road. No longer clad in Reaper uniform, Leah is seen surviving as she did before shacking up with Daryl in a cabin in Season 10: alone.
"It's sad," Collins said. "The arc is really transformative, and where we see her go, she keeps going to this place that we're going to see. She's alive, which means she's got to fight to survive on her own now. And what is that going to do to her?"
"It's sort of like when we meet her, she's been on her own. In Season 10, she's been on her own for a number of years," Collins added of last season's "Find Me," which revealed Daryl and Leah's romance during a six-year time skip. "And then we see her as this sort of maternal, alpha female, and now she's back to being alone. So is she going to go back to that more docile sort of place emotionally, or does she double down on being this badass killer? That's really what her choice is going to be here."
New episodes of The Walking Dead: The Final Season air Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter and @NewsOfTheDead for TWD Universe coverage all season long.