Lauren Cohan Reacts to Devastating Death on The Walking Dead

Warning: this story contains spoilers for Sunday’s “No Other Way” episode of The Walking Dead. Was it worth the cost? That’s what we asked Lauren Cohan about the latest loss in Maggie’s mission to take back Meridian and feed an Alexandria struggling to survive in the aftermath of the Whisperer War. “I trust you to do the right thing,” Savior turned survivor Alden (Callan McAuliffe) tells Maggie (Cohan) in “Hunted,” where the enemy Reapers hunt down and kill what’s left of the Wardens. “No matter how hard it is or how much it costs you.”

Sunday’s “No Other Way” ends the war with the Reapers, Maggie finishing off the soldier squad commanded by Pope (Ritchie Coster) and Leah (Lynn Collins). After securing the food and supplies that Wardens Cole (James Devoti), Duncan (Marcus Lewis), Agatha (Laurie Fortier), and Frost (Glenn Stanton) fought and died for, Maggie returns to the church where Alden was left behind earlier in the season. 

Maggie made the choice to keep going without the gravely injured Alden, too hurt to make it to Meridian in “Hunted.” Calling himself “dead weight,” Alden asked Maggie to leave him behind and — if the worst happens — to watch over his adopted son, orphaned Whisperer baby Adam. 

The worst has happened. Maggie returns to the barricaded church to find a shambling walker inside with a turned Alden, his hobbled, reanimated corpse crawling at her feet. Maggie puts the zombified Alden down, grieving with a whimper and then a wail.

ComicBook asked Cohan if Maggie made the right choice taking this trip to Meridian and whether the temporary respite for Alexandria was worth it in the end.   

“I don’t know. I don’t know if she does [feel like it was worth it],” Cohan told me. “It certainly doesn’t feel like it. I don’t wanna say too much. I don’t know. It’s hard to say because it costs them so much.” 

“No Other Way” ends with Lance Hornsby (Josh Hamilton), the diplomatic Deputy Governor of the Commonwealth, arriving at Alexandria with Eugene (Josh McDermitt) and an envoy of armored troopers. They’re here to help, says Hornsby, extending an invitation to the Alexandrians to join Governor Pamela Milton (Laila Robins) at the advanced community. 

That it happens right as Maggie’s road-weary group returns home to Alexandria is “a real twist of the knife,” Cohan said, adding the fight for Meridian’s food “has cost the lives of so many.” 

“Like Father Gabriel says in the end of the episode, ‘So many didn’t make it. All so we could survive.’ And then the Commonwealth turns up with food, supplies, and everything,” Cohan said. “The balance of war is always a very difficult thing to know, and to know the cost, and to understand, and to justify the cost. The rest remains to be seen this year.” 

New episodes of The Walking Dead: The Final Season air Sundays on AMC and AMC+. 

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