The Walking Dead’s Margot Bingham Explains Eugene and Stephanie Twist

Warning: this story contains spoilers for Sunday’s “The Lucky Ones” episode of The Walking Dead. “I’m Max. There is no Stephanie,” reveals Max (Margot Bingham) when identifying herself as the mystery voice on Eugene’s (Josh McDermitt) radio. After arriving at the Commonwealth to meet the woman he fell in love with over the radio, Eugene learned his first-ever girlfriend was a fiction: the Steph-phony is really Shira (Chelle Ramos), a covert operative working for Lance Hornsby (Josh Hamilton). In “The Lucky Ones,” Eugene meets Max — the real Stephanie he connected with over the airwaves back in Season 10.

Max reveals she used dumped radio parts to call out live on the open air in the Season 9 finale and again in the Season 10 episode “Bonds.” Using the alias “Stephanie” — her mother’s name — and the call sign “Blue Weevil,” Max makes contact with Eugene “Tater Bug” at the Hilltop, and the two plan a rendezvous in Charleston, West Virginia. 

But the transmission is intercepted by Hornsby and investigated by General Mercer (Michael James Shaw), Max’s brother. This unauthorized contact with a rogue community leads Mercer’s white-armored troopers to ambush and apprehend Eugene and traveling companions Ezekiel (Khary Payton), Yumiko (Eleanor Matsuura), and Princess (Paola Lazaro) at the rail yard, later processing them for admittance into the Commonwealth.  

Why didn’t Max tell Eugene about the Stephanie imposter sooner? When I called out on the open air to ask Bingham about the Max-Stephanie twist, Bingham explained the executive assistant of Commonwealth Governor Pamela Milton (Laila Robins) is cautious to protect herself and her brother — and Eugene. 

“I think Max knows her place in this hierarchy and in this classism that is the Commonwealth, and she’s very cautious with her moves. She also has a lot to gain, and she has a lot to lose, because her family is also on the inside,” Bingham told ComicBook in an exclusive postmortem. “So, she’s cautiously aware of every move that she makes. I think she knows to keep Eugene as safe as she possibly can, but there’s really only so much that she can do, so she’s trying to do her best. She really is trying to do her best.”

Read ComicBook’s full Q&A with Margot Bingham about “The Lucky Ones.” New episodes of The Walking Dead: The Final Season Part 2 of 3 air Sundays on AMC and AMC+.  

Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter and @NewsOfTheDead for TWD Universe coverage all season long.