Lauren Cohan on Maggie Trusting Negan on The Walking Dead (Exclusive)

A miracle happens in “Acts of God,” Sunday’s midseason finale of The Walking Dead. The first part of Season 11 begins with Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) leaving Maggie (Lauren Cohan) behind to die in a subway tunnel teeming with walkers to spare himself from her wrath, but the second part ends with a bombshell of biblical proportions: Maggie says she’s starting to trust the man who murdered Glenn (Steven Yeun). After saving Maggie’s life on their mission to Meridian, Negan twice risks his life protecting Maggie and Glenn’s son Hershel (Kien Michael Spiller): first from a squad of Commonwealth commandos at Riverbend, and again when Maggie is in the crosshairs of Lance (Josh Hamilton) and Leah (Lynn Collins).

“You saved him at Riverbend. Whatever else happens, and whatever else has happened, I will never forget that,” Maggie says when entrusting Hershel in the care of Negan and his pregnant wife Annie (Medina Senghore) in “Acts of God.” ComicBook spoke with Cohan about the midseason shocker, and what that trust in Negan means for Maggie moving forward in the third and final part of the finale season. 

“In this episode, it is a big moment when Maggie tells Negan she trusts him,” Cohan exclusively told ComicBook. “A big part of that I think is for the needs at that moment, which is keeping Hershel safe so she can go and eliminate these threats that have to be eliminated. It’s kind of a no-choice situation. I know that despite how she feels about Negan, he does have this reputation for being a caretaker of younger people and trustworthy in that sense.” 

Negan also has a reputation for beating Glenn and Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) to death with a barbwire-wrapped baseball bat years earlier. But says Cohan, Maggie “knows in her rational mind that he is not going to enact things like he did with Glenn and Abraham now.”

“The other thing is that Annie being there, and Annie vouching for him and his relationship with her, I think does help to pave the way for Maggie to accept that he has changed,” Cohan explained, adding it “does not change what happened.” 

In “The Rotten Core,” Annie reveals she’s 12-weeks pregnant with Negan’s child. When Maggie tearfully tells Annie her new husband “doesn’t get to forget” what he did to her husband, Annie assures her, “He hasn’t. What matters to me is who he is now. He’s someone who will do whatever he can to protect your boy.”

“I think right off the bat, she gets a sense of this woman, and she feels a kinship with her because of the way she leads and because of her compassion. Which I think is really evident as soon as you meet Medina’s character,” Cohan said of Annie, leader of the Riverbend apartment complex group Hilltop is harboring from the Commonwealth. “She just has that spirit, and I think that Maggie recognizes that.”

The Walking Dead returns with its final eight episodes later this year on AMC and AMC+. Cohan and Morgan will co-lead Maggie and Negan spinoff Isle of the Dead, set to premiere in 2023 on AMC. 

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