The Walking Dead Star Lauren Cohan Reveals Dream Ending for Final Season

The Walking Dead star Lauren Cohan, who returns as Maggie Rhee in Sunday’s Season 10 finale, has revealed her dream ending for the show’s eleventh and final season. Pitching the joint return of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira), who departed the television show in seasons nine and ten, respectively, Cohan hopes for a series finale taking place 40 years in the future. Following “A Certain Doom,” there are just 30 episodes left until the end of The Walking Dead, including a six-episode mini-season to premiere early 2021 ahead of the two-year, 24-episode final season to conclude in late 2022.

“There’s so many ways it could go and maybe I just don’t really think it’s over. I can’t foresee the end,” Cohan told NME. “If we’re just dreaming, I would love to see Rick come back. That’s how I’d love it to end, I’d love to see him land in a helicopter and Michonne to be with him.”

For her character, Cohan envisions Maggie surviving another four decades.

“It would be really, really fun if we got to do a 40-year time jump,” Cohan said. “You sort of peel back and start on a close-up of some very elderly hands and it takes a minute to figure out whose they are.”

She continued, “Once you realize whose [hands] they are, where they are and where the world is now and what that means and who’s with her… maybe it’s her final days. Maybe she doesn’t die by a zombie? That’s an idea.”

In the 193rd and final issue of creator Robert Kirkman’s comic book, a time jump of 25 years reveals a different Walking Dead. A grown-up Carl raises a daughter in a world where walkers, referred to as “Walking Dead,” have become managed to the point that they’ve little-seen.

The final issue reveals President Maggie Greene, the head of a looming merger between the East and Western Alliances of the United States. Maggie, along with Eugene Porter and Judge Michonne Hawthorne, is one of the survivors responsible for shaping this safer and more peaceful future.

In July, Kirkman said there’s “a lot of implied story in the final issue” that he hopes to see adapted for the television show.

“There’s some general thoughts and notions that I have for that,” the executive producer said during a live-stream Q&A. “If the television show ever gets to that point in the comic book series, and we decide to continue past that point, I’m kind of excited about the idea of telling a little bit more with older Eugene and Judge Michonne and the different things that were in the comic series that could have gone on, and we could have done more with. So that could be kind of neat.”

The Walking Dead Season 10 finale, “A Certain Doom,” premieres Sunday, October 4 on AMC, followed by the series premiere of new spinoff The Walking Dead: World Beyond. For all things TWD, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.