Negan Provokes Maggie in The Walking Dead Talked About Scene: "Like Glenn Was"

Negan nearly pushes Maggie too far in the talked about scene from The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 1. Spoiler warning for the season premiere, "Acheron: Part 1." Tension between the two enemies comes to a head in subway tunnels beneath D.C., where Negan guides Alexandrians through the city on a crucial supplies mission to Meridian. But Negan suspects Maggie has ulterior motives, wanting to lure him to his final destination so she can at long last avenge the husband that Negan murdered years earlier. In this extended clip from "Acheron: Part 1," watch what happens when Negan accuses Maggie of leading him on a death march.

"She brought me here to die. If we get through this, I'm not coming back," Negan tells the scavenging survivors when excusing himself from the dead-end undertaking. "She'll find a way, she'll find a reason. She'll do it herself, away from the prying eyes of Alexandria. Here in the jungle."

A glaring Daryl and accusations of paranoia do nothing to deter him: Maggie can't lead these people. "Her head isn't even in the game because I'm in her head, living rent-free," he snarls, poking and pressing to get it over with right here and right now. "Because I am not gonna let you drag me through the mud, filth, and slime to put me down like a dog. Like Glenn was."

"I fought it! That's the one line that I immediately called [showrunner Angela Kang] and I was like, 'I can't say it. I can't f---ing bring up Glenn's name here,'" Morgan told Entertainment Weekly about the going-too-far reference to Glenn's death at the end of Negan's baseball bat. "And I was like, 'Any goodwill that Negan has gotten on his side is going to go out the window the minute I say Glenn.' I tried to nix the line completely."

Morgan argued the line was unnecessary and experimented with different takes, replacing "Glenn" with "your husband" and other substitutions to keep the name out of Negan's mouth.

"But ultimately, it was like, 'Well, let's just try the f---ing Glenn line.' And then, of course, when I saw the cut, I was like, 'Oh, f---ers!' [Laughs] They had to put it in," Morgan said. "But look, I get it. I know why it was there, to elicit the reaction exactly that you and I felt in seeing it."

Here's how Walking Dead viewers reacted to the jaw-dropping exchange: