Negan and Maggie Meet Again in New Look at The Walking Dead Extended Season 10

Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) meet again for the first time in years when The Walking Dead returns with six new episodes in February. More than seven years after their climactic confrontation in season 9 episode "What Comes After," where widowed Maggie plotted with Daryl (Norman Reedus) to execute the jailed murderer of husband Glenn (Steven Yeun), Negan is a free man. Carol (Melissa McBride) commuted the reformed villain's life sentence when she set him free to infiltrate the Whisperers and assassinate Alpha (Samantha Morton), making Negan instrumental in ending the Whisperer War brought to a bloody finish in October's "A Certain Doom."

Negan and Maggie cross paths in the extended season 10 premiere, "Home Sweet Home," which you can see in a new first-look photo from the episode airing February 28:

"You're out," Maggie tells Negan in a virtual table read clip released in October. No longer the withered prisoner Maggie left to rot years earlier, Negan tells her, "I didn't escape, if that's what you're thinking."

Carol confesses to Maggie about letting Negan out of jail, explaining that "we were going to lose everything. Negan is the reason we didn't." Daryl adds that "nothing's decided" with Negan, prompting Carol to point out Maggie is "never gonna come around on him."

When Daryl asks if Carol has come around on the group's former enemy, she shrugs. "It's good to see her," Carol says, not regretting her decision to orchestrate Alpha's death and avenge slain son Henry (Matt Lintz).

"Look, Negan killed Maggie's husband and burnt down her house, so it's just not going to be an easy road, I think, for either of them," showrunner Angela Kang said during a virtual Comic-Con panel over the summer. "And Negan's been on this whole other journey while she's been gone, but it's sort of like Maggie is coming in and she hasn't seen any of that."

Because Maggie and son Hershel spent years away from Virginia as part of the new community where they found masked warrior Elijah (Okea Eme-Akwari), it's a surprise to learn Negan avenged Maggie's friends murdered by the Whisperers. After one of Alpha's skin-wearing weirdos cut down interim Hilltop leader Jesus (Tom Payne), Alpha decapitated Tara (Alanna Masterson) and Maggie's protege, Enid (Katelyn Nacon), and spiked their heads at a border marking Whisperer territory.

"It'll be interesting to see if anybody kind of tells Maggie what Negan's been up to, or if they just put it on Negan to kind of start from scratch with this," Morgan said at virtual New York Comic Con in October. "I think that's an Angela and Scott [Gimple, executive producer] thing."

Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD. The Walking Dead returns to AMC with new episodes on Sunday, February 28.