The Walking Dead Planned for Maggie and Negan to "Take Over" for Four More Seasons

Before Maggie and Negan took Manhattan in The Walking Dead: Dead City, there were plans for Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan to take over The Walking Dead. First, Cohan's Maggie and Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes exited AMC's flagship series after an abbreviated five-episode run in season 9. Then it looked like Norman Reedus' Daryl and Melissa McBride's Carol would leave the show together for their own spin-off before returning to the main show. And then Danai Gurira's Michonne made her departure after a handful of episodes in season 10. In 2020, AMC announced it would wrap up The Walking Dead with an eleventh and final season. 

Cohan returned to the series at the end of season 10 and stayed on full-time through the show's final 30 episodes. Reedus and McBride also abandoned plans for Daryl and Carol to leave and come back to the flagship, with AMC green-lighting the Daryl & Carol spin-off that wouldn't have sent them off until after season 11. In the end, Reedus, McBride, Cohan, and Morgan all appeared as regulars through the series finale. 

But that wasn't always the plan. Executive producer and Walking Dead Universe chief content officer Scott M. Gimple pitched Cohan and Morgan on another four seasons of The Walking Dead, which would have continued without Lincoln, Gurira, Reedus, and McBride. 

"Before I even went back to The Walking Dead at the end of season 10, Scott Gimple had asked me about my interest in either coming back on the show or doing a different show. Originally what they ended up deciding to do was have me come back on the show and then have Jeff and I 'take over,'" Cohan told BuzzFeed. "At the time, Norman was going to leave, Andy had already left, Danai had left. We were gonna go into season 11 and do four more years with the show, with Jeff and I kind of remaining on The Walking Dead."

Cohan continued: "And in the end, they had this idea for Dead City, with our characters in a whole new location with a new storyline and that sounded really exciting because it meant we could jump forward in time."

Ultimately, the decision to end The Walking Dead after 11 seasons "was AMC," Gimple previously told EW. "It was heavy when it happened. I wasn't expecting it and had all sorts of plans for the future. When the end was announced, it was like, 'Okay, how do we pivot?' How do we enmesh even some of our plans for the future into this final season? And how do we do it in other ways, outside the series."

The answer would be not one but three new offshoots spinning out of the flagship: Maggie and Negan in The Walking Dead: Dead City; Daryl and Carol in their joint spin-off, eventually reworked as The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon; and Rick and Michonne in The Walking Dead: Rick & Michonne.

Dead City airs Sundays on AMC. Daryl Dixon premieres this fall, followed by Rick & Michonne in 2024.

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