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The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 has been a turning point for Maggie Rhee.
After years of being consumed by grief, rage, and her complicated relationship with Negan, Maggie finally seems ready to look toward the future.
That doesn’t mean she’s forgotten Glenn or forgiven Negan for killing him. Instead, she’s finally reached a place where she can acknowledge that Negan has become one of the closest things she has to family.
It’s a complicated dynamic, but that’s exactly what Lauren Cohan believes makes it work.
“I think it’s been so hard to articulate the dynamic that Maggie and Negan have, outside of showing it in the series and showing the development, and they’ve built trust, and they’ve built a dynamic where they can rely on each other,” Cohan said in an interview with TV Fanatic.
For Cohan, the word “family” captures something about their relationship that nothing else really can.
“Family is complex, you know? You can still have terrible history, but recognize that there’s a benefit to being there for each other.”
Obviously, Maggie and Negan’s history is about as complicated as it gets.
But The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 is about Maggie finally understanding that she doesn’t have to stay trapped by it.
That becomes particularly clear when Luis returns Glenn’s ring to Maggie near the end of The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 Episode 8, and Maggie chooses to put it away.
For Cohan, that moment represents Maggie allowing herself to heal without letting go of the person she’s been grieving all these years.
“I think that she’s willing to be willing.”
“For a long time, Maggie’s been trapped in this netherworld of not really grieving, and not letting go. And letting go doesn’t mean forgetting anything; it just means giving herself the grace to heal.”
Maggie has spent so much of her life trying to survive that she has struggled to actually live. By the end of The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3, Cohan believes that is finally changing.
“She finds a new peace, I think. I think she just wants to live now. And she wants to be here. She wants to really be in her life.”
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That means being present with her son and the people around her, while allowing herself to experience something beyond the rage and grief that have consumed so much of her life.
Cohan described it as Maggie finally being able to see beyond “the rage and the grief and the seeking to make sense of it,” after realizing that sometimes the world doesn’t make sense.
That change also allowed Cohan to play a very different Maggie.
“I feel like she’s been afraid that if she lets go of control a little bit, then all of the people she couldn’t protect, and all of her regrets, and all of her fears, and the vulnerable part of her will suddenly be very exposed and in danger, as will her son and anybody else that she cares for in this world.”
That fear has shaped Maggie for years, but The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 forced her to reconsider what strength actually looks like.
“I think this season, she’s finally realized that being vulnerable and open is the only way to survive.”
That has been one of the biggest shifts for Cohan as an actor, too, particularly as Maggie has been allowed to shed the darkness.
“The idea of what is strength and what is survival, quote-unquote, has had to adapt, and that’s been such a pleasure for me, seeing Maggie lighten up.”
Cohan added that “It’s just exhausting to live in rage and resentment.”
That change is also what makes Maggie’s final interaction of the season with Negan so meaningful.
When she gives him the badge after asking him to be her head of security, it feels like a full-circle moment for a relationship defined for years by conflict.
For Cohan, the moment connects directly to where Maggie and Negan were way back on The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 Episode 1.
She pointed to Negan’s belief that he didn’t have anything valuable to offer after losing Ginny, and Maggie’s disappointment when he decided to check out and live in the bar.
“At her core, Maggie has always been such a compassionate person, and regardless of their history, to see someone suffer when what they really need most is purpose to thrive and to step into their greatest version of themselves.”
That’s ultimately what Maggie and Negan have been able to give each other this season: purpose.
Cohan described it as “such an inspiration and a lift and a whole new lease on life” to see them do that for each other.
And that’s what makes the ending feel like such a significant turning point. Maggie hasn’t forgiven Negan. She hasn’t forgotten Glenn.
But she has finally stopped letting that history keep her from moving forward.
As Cohan put it when discussing Maggie’s decision to break that cycle, “The only way is through.”
Of course, Maggie’s decision to move forward comes with another huge question.
At the end of the episode, she asks something of Negan that could shape the future of The Walking Dead: City if it gets renewed for Season 4, but Cohan wasn’t giving much away.
“There are two ways that we can go with it, but I can’t say what they are. But there are definitely things in mind.”
She could reveal that “it’s about the future of New York.”
And that’s exciting because there is still so much of New York left for Dead City to explore.
“I feel like we’re just scratching the surface.”
Cohan also has ideas for where the show could go if it returns for another season, particularly after Season 3 opened the door to some more unconventional storytelling.
When I asked whether she had ideas for more alternate-reality episodes after The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 Episode 6, Cohan wouldn’t disclose what she had in mind because she hopes some of those ideas could actually happen.
She did, however, suggest that the show could continue going “really outside the box” with “mashups.”
“Now that we’ve sort of broken the seal, and that Maggie and Negan have sort of moved into this new era, I just think there’s so much fun to be had.”
That’s particularly true now that Maggie and Negan are no longer locked in the same cycle of resentment.
“I love them as individual characters, and I love the way they bounce off of each other, and I love what could happen with the world once they are not at loggerheads.”
After everything Maggie and Negan have been through, that might be the most exciting possibility of all.
The story doesn’t have to keep returning to the same conflict. They can finally move forward.
And Lauren Cohan is already thinking about what that could look like.
“I spend too much time thinking about it,” she said with a laugh.
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