Maggie's Relationship With Negan After The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 Finale Explained By Lauren Cohan: "This Is F***ing Over Today"

Over a decade after her introduction to the world of The Walking Dead, Lauren Cohan continues to break new ground as Maggie, especially in moments like The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 finale. The return of the hit spinoff series once again followed the journeys of longtime enemies Maggie and Negan through the streets of post-apocalyptic New York City, but dove deeper into personal relationships, especially that between Maggie and her son Herschel. The finale episode showed Maggie making one of the hardest choices imaginable as a mother: to support Herschel’s independence, even against her own protective instincts.

The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 also majorly changed things in the dynamic between Maggie and Negan. After the events of this episode, seemingly gone are the passion-fueled fights that could easily lead to the death of one character or the other. Instead, Maggie and Negan seem to have reached some sort of understanding, and while their paths are no longer linked in the same way as before, the door appears open for a more level–if not friendlier–relationship.

ScreenRant spoke with Cohan about her work on The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 finale and she reflected on the biggest moments of the episode, especially Maggie's chance to kill Negan and her decision to step away from Herschel at her son's behest. Cohan also weighed in on the future of Maggie and Negan's relationship and what she wants for her character in the future.

How Directing An Episode Changed Lauren Cohan’s Take On Maggie

“It Gave Me A Clearer Picture”

In addition to continuing her portrayal of Maggie in The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2, Lauren Cohan also sat in the director’s chair for the season’s sixth episode, “Bridge Partners Are Hard To Come By These Days.” It was Cohan’s first directorial effort, and it had a meaningful effect on how she viewed her Walking Dead character. “I started shadowing other directors maybe five years ago or something,” Cohan shared, adding, “That definitely affected me as an actor.”

Elaborating, Cohan shared that it has historically been hard to speak “in generalities about Maggie … because it would be the same as me saying to you, ‘Who are you and what are you about? How do you say [that] concisely?’” Having to answer questions like “‘Do these things ring true? Do these fit the character?’” on a larger scale, not only about Maggie but also for other characters, gave Cohan “a chance to understand the arc of an episode and the pacing of an episode in a way that I hadn’t needed to before.”

How Maggie’s Anger Toward Negan Has Evolved

“‘I Don’t Want This Feeling Anymore’”

There is a standout sequence in The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 finale that fundamentally alters the relationship between Maggie and Negan, and it begins when Maggie sees Negan in a very familiar position. Negan, standing over a group of captives with his new Lucille, essentially recreates the moments just before Glenn’s death all those years ago, which could easily trigger Maggie’s memories of that event. But at this point in the story, Cohan explained, Maggie is in a different place.

“There’s so much talk about Negan triggering memories of Glenn and moments with Herschel … that make Maggie either consciously or unconsciously shut down or react,” Cohan said. “The way it probably reads as a viewer is this very tangible trauma, when I turn back around the corner when I see him doing it.”

But Cohan recalls feeling another aspect of Maggie’s experience on the day of shooting: “‘Here’s the pinnacle of him pushing this button, or me allowing him to push this button, and I don’t want this feeling anymore. This has to stop.’”

According to the actor, the moment also helped Maggie have another revelation. In her words, “‘This is making me realize what I’m doing to my kid. This is making me realize how I’m never going to have a connection with my son’ … I think it was kind of reaching a limit [with] observing this inescapable loop that it puts her into.”

Cohan Explains Maggie’s Choice To Stab Negan In The Back

“‘This Is F***ing Over Today’”

But Maggie doesn’t just stab Negan–she stabs him in the back, without any sort of face-to-face confrontation. “It’s like, ‘I’m going to sneak up on him,’” Cohan shared, adding, “[It’s] almost like I need to, because she does have her game face on, and she has to psyche herself up to go do it … I don’t even want to see him. I’m not going to let anything stop me. I’m not going to let anything get in my way.’”

“There’s not a conversation. There’s not a battle,” Cohan continued, “because we had a battle in season 1. We had that moment in the hangar. And I think there was something clean about the way it wasn’t a fight again. Although it’s not final. None of it’s final.”

How The Maggie And Negan Dynamic Has Changed, Explained

“The Dynamic That They’re In Is Over”

Maggie does ultimately go on to save Negan after realizing he had been doing everything he could to protect Ginny, and by the end of that sequence, Cohan said, “This dynamic that they’re in is over.” Although she qualified that with “for the most part, because, at the end of the day, they have not killed each other.”

“If I want to answer this really simply,” Cohan said, “It’s all a question of grace–can Maggie find the grace [for Negan], and also for herself, and not need to [dwell on this relationship]?” But, she then said, “It’s not really that simple. No matter what happens with Negan, I guess what I’m interested in is Maggie’s relationship to everything else in the world. And that is something she has not been able to explore because of her experience with Negan. I would like to see her move through this force field and be in anti-gravity on the other side.”

Lauren Cohan Reflects On Maggie’s Decision With Herschel

“She Really Let Him Go”

One of the biggest surprises of The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 finale was when Maggie let Herschel remain with the Dama while promising she would stay nearby for when he was ready. “We got to look at something this year that was really important,” Cohan said, “Which was a kid asking their parent to see them, and maybe for the parent to find it almost impossible.”

“But the other ways were actually worse,” Cohan said about “[muscling] him back to The Bricks.” “The other ways would be more damaging to their relationship.” Ultimately, Cohan said, “For Maggie to hope that if she really, really meant it, and she really let him go to make his own decisions, that somehow the right thing would still happen and that when he knew she was seeing him, wouldn't leave the island, and would be there for when he was ready–that that was the thing he'd really been asking for.”

What’s In Store For Maggie After The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2

Could She Reunite With Daryl & Carol?

The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 ends with a promise that Maggie will stay in New York–but when asked if her story ends there, Cohan said, “I’m like, ‘No. Absolute, huge no’ … I love New York for our story, but a big part of what has been happening for me as we reflect on these seasons and the show before that, and what we hope we can do if we get to continue, is, ‘How far do you go from who you first [were] to get you back to who you are?’”

“I don't know if this is what would actually happen,” Cohan said, “but for me it's like there is this kind of holistic loop. There is this sort of holistic circle [where] I hope to find ourselves almost back at the beginning in the end for her. I hope, older [and] wiser. But yeah, who knows, it's all a circle.”