The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 Ending, Explained – and What’s Next for Maggie & Negan

[Warning: This article contains spoilers from The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 finale, “If History Were a Conflagration.”] “What’s the future without the past? What’s an ending without that old story?” That’s the question that Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) ponders in Sunday’s Dead City finale, which forces Maggie (Lauren Cohan) to find a way to move forward with her son Hershel (Logan Kim) by putting the past behind them. That “old story” is Maggie’s 15-year vendetta against Negan, one that started on The Walking Dead when Negan bludgeoned Glenn (Steven Yeun) to death with his barbed-wire baseball bat, widowing Maggie and leaving her unborn son without his father. And, in a way, his mother.

The series finale of The Walking Dead ended with Maggie and Negan reaching an uneasy détente. Negan apologized for killing Glenn, and Maggie acknowledged that she couldn’t forgive him, saying, “I don’t want to hate you anymore. I don’t want to hurt like that, and I don’t want my son to see that anybody has that kind of hold over me.” Maggie and Negan then went their separate ways, with Maggie relocating the Hilltop colony to the Bricks and Negan leaving Virginia with wife Annie (Medina Senghore) and son Joshua.

In Dead City season 1, Maggie tracked down Negan after his former Savior underling, the Croat (Željko Ivanek), kidnapped Hershel and took him to the Isle of the Dead that is New York City. Negan, a wanted man on the run from New Babylon Marshal Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles), agreed to help Maggie get her son back from the Croat on one condition: she shelter his orphaned ward, Ginny (Mahina Napoleon).

It turned out that Negan also killed Ginny’s father, and that the Croat strongarmed Maggie into bringing the fugitive Negan from the mainland to Manhattan by taking her son. Maggie gave up Negan to the Croat, who proceeded to hand him over to the Dama (Lisa Emery), a power broker who wanted Negan to unite and lead the city’s gangs to defend the island’s resource — power-generating methane gas — from New Babylon, a Federation of States under the control of Governor Byrd (Jasmin Walker).

To recap, season 2 of Dead City has been a literal power struggle between New York’s main power players, which includes the Dama and Bruegel (Kim Coates), leader of a rival gang that the Dama tasked Negan with getting in line. Under threat of invasion by the New Babylonians, who sought to replace their dwindling ethanol supply with methane, Negan was able to convince Bruegel to join the Dama’s alliance — only for the gambling Bruegel to plot his own power grab.

Meanwhile, Negan turned the Croat against the Dama before exiling him from the Burazi, the Dama’s manipulations turned Hershel against Maggie, and Bruegel turned on Negan as he conspired with New Babylon Colonel Armstrong to seize the methane. Now that the table has been set, let’s break down “If History Were a Conflagration,” the eighth and final episode of this season, and how it sets up The Walking Dead: Dead City season 3.

How is the Dama alive?

It appeared that the Dama died during a Negan-caused confrontation with the Croat, long unappreciated and unacknowledged for his brilliance in producing the methane powering her empire. A physical altercation ensued, and the Croat tossed her into a table, knocking over lit candles that caused a fire. He then left the Dama to die as she was pinned beneath an overturned clothing rack while the room was consumed by flames.

The charred corpse that seemed to be the Dama was actually “one of the already dead,” she explains in the finale, telling Maggie she let the zombie “burn until she got nice and crispy.” (How the Dama managed to escape in order to fake her death with a walker goes unexplained.)

What does the Dama want with Hershel?

The Dama has a hold on Hershel, who resents his mother for the hold that Negan has had over Maggie his entire life.

Because Hershel never knew the “old world,” the Dama explains to Maggie, he can help build the new world. She tells Maggie her son could “dream up something that you and I never could,” and they’ll need someone to protect the new world.

The Dama wanted that to be Negan — first threatening to harm Hershel to coerce Negan into acting as her enforcer, and then using Negan’s family as her leverage — but after he turned the Croat against her and nearly got her killed, the Dama manipulates Maggie into going after Negan. Hershel told her how capable Maggie is, so the Dama sics the widow on the man who murdered her husband.

Why does Maggie go after Negan?

Episodes earlier, Negan told Maggie where she could find the methane for New Babylon before warning her that Hershel was helping the Dama. After Hershel led the Dama to his mother last episode, Maggie awakens as her prisoner.

“I would’ve thought that we have this in common, wanting Negan dead. But I understand,” the Dama tells Maggie. “When Negan is up, you feel the need to knock him down. And when he’s down, you have to prop him back up. You’re stuck in a loop. You can’t let it go. You can’t let him go. And how could you? He murdered your husband. Violently. Gleefully. After losing so many people who meant so much to you — your mother, your father, your sister, and now your son. He needed you.”

“But how could you be there for him when you couldn’t be there for yourself?” the Dama continues, accusing Maggie of neglecting Hershel and nurturing her hatred of Negan. “It’s
okay, Maggie. You can still get him back. Negan is still out there… widowing wives and orphaning children. Only you can stop him. Only you can kill him. Don’t do it for me. Do it for you. Do it for Hershel. Set yourselves free.”

How does Maggie feel about Negan?

Maggie admits to Hershel that she still hasn’t moved on despite trying to get past the hurt that Negan caused her.

“I’m not over it. I’ve never been over it,” Maggie says. “I think about him all the time. I think about what he did. And I know that I have to let it go. I know that it’s the only way. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to do it. I’m sorry.” Hershel, apologizing for his betrayal, tells his mother he knows she’s tried. But it hasn’t worked.

“I want us to be a family. I want to move on, and be free,” Hershel says. “But there’s only one way. And then… we can just be done with it. We can start over.” To that, Maggie tells Hershel, “I’ll finish it.”

The Dama smiles, having maneuvered Maggie into taking out the rogue Negan.

New Lucille, Old Negan

Negan’s flamethrower and walker-wielding Burazi attack Bruegel’s gang of Silk Stockings at St. Patrick’s Cathedral after Armstrong learns that Ginny came to Bruegel while gunning for Negan to avenge her father. Despite her attempt to kill him, Negan risked his life to get Ginny antibiotics and a ventilator to help treat her worsening infection. (She was impaled during a scuffle between New Babylon and the Foragers in Central Park.)

Armstrong stops Bruegel from going after Ginny with a flamethrower, but Negan has them both captured by the Burazi. Bruegel blames the coup on Armstrong’s people and tries to talk his way into making a deal with Negan to get the methane, beat New Babylon, and bring back the old world “the way it used to be.”

“Not just a couple of blocks, but the whole city. The whole f—ing planet,” Bruegel pleads. “And then you and me, we’ll be back on top. The winners, with all the spoils… just like it used to be.”

Meanwhile, Maggie eavesdrops and watches as Negan — wielding the new electrified Lucille bat that the Croat made for him — forces Bruegel and Armstrong to their knees for a game of “eenie, meenie, miney, mo.” Maggie recoils in horror at the familiar sight: Negan in a black leather jacket, swinging a barbed wire-covered baseball bat, picking a victim in a lineup as he did all those years ago with Glenn…

Who dies in The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 finale?

“Eenie, meenie, miney, mo. Catch a tiger by his toe. If he hollers, let him go. Eenie… meenie… miney… mo.” Negan lands on Armstrong, but decides he wants to kill Bruegel first. As Bruegel begs for his life, Negan grabs a tube from the flamethrower tank, inserts it into Bruegel’s mouth, and forces him to inhale methane.

Negan grabs a lit torch and sets fire to Bruegel’s big mouth, and then brings the bat down on his head, bashing Bruegel’s brains into pulp — and triggering a visceral reaction in the shivering Maggie.

Before he can swing on Armstrong, Maggie sneaks up behind Negan and stabs him in the back. Negan drops Lucille and flees, leaving Maggie to pick up the replica of the bat used to kill Glenn. As Negan crawls away, slithering to safety, Maggie goes after him to finish it once and for all.

Does Maggie kill Negan?

Negan gets to the cell where Ginny has been recuperating — only to find that Ginny died, having succumbed to her infection and reanimated. Negan sobs and Maggie withdraws a blade. Softened, Maggie hands it to Negan to plunge the blade into Ginny’s head, putting her down.

Negan mourns Ginny’s death, and Maggie decides against killing him.

How does The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 ending set up season 3?

Negan regrets that Ginny died alone, and Maggie goes back to Hershel. He knows she didn’t kill Negan.

“You said you understood. You said we could start over, but you didn’t mean it,” he yells as the Dama sneaks away. “It’s the same as it always is.”

“We were wrong. It’s not like how we said. And killing Negan would only make it worse,” Maggie tells Hershel, adding that’s not how they’re going to move forward from the past. He’s furious with his mother and says he and the Dama will “get there together.”

“I know what you’re going through,” Maggie responds. “You think that you wanna run off and be somebody different. You wanna hurt me. You wanna hurt me back. Just know I will always be here for you. I won’t leave the city.” 
Hershel leaves to go off with the Dama, and Maggie cries as mother and son are separated.

Maggie, Negan, and Armstrong hole up in the city as they watch the second wave of the New Babylon army march into New York to seize the methane. “So where do we go from here?” Maggie asks.

Armstrong recalls the riddle that Roksana (Pooya Mohseni) of the Foragers imparted to him earlier in the season. “Walking through the woods, a man comes to a fork in his path. To go left is to go home, his past. To go right is to go out into the unknown, his future,” he says. “He knows his past. It’s comforting. But will it be like he remembers? And his future is full of possibilities. But what if he gets lost? Which way does he go? He goes left.”

We see flip-flopping New Babylon historian Benjamin Pierce (Keir Gilchrist) lead the New Babylonians to the methane plant as Maggie narrates the next section of the riddle. “Back home, to the way things were. But all that’s waiting for him is an old story that hurts too much to remember.”

Elsewhere, the Dama, with Hershel at her side, watches New Babylon take the cathedral. “So he goes right, but there’s nothing there for him either,” Negan intones in voice over. “Because what’s the future without the past? What’s an ending without that old story?”

“The truth is there is only one way forward. One way to move on. We gotta work through what was,” Maggie continues, with Negan’s voice adding, “To get to what will be.” Maggie and Negan’s words play over the past, from the first season, when the enemies made their way into New York together.

Maggie and Negan’s voices become intertwined. “It’s a path that’s hard and rough, all uphill. We keep thinking we’ll never make it. Sometimes we see where we’re headed. We catch a glimpse of the mountaintop. It’s so beautiful, it takes our breath away. 
But then we lose our footing.
 We tumble backwards, right back to the bottom. So that it feels like we’ll never get up again… 
But we do. We help each other up. 
And the path becomes much clearer now.”

“We move on,” Negan remarks, with Maggie finishing, “Together.” In the final words of the season, Maggie and Negan say together: “And we get there.”