‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’ Star Confirms That Maggie and Negan’s Dynamic Will Shift in a Possible Season 4

Image via AMC Published Sep 13, 2026, 10:30 PM EDT Sign in to your Collider account Editor's note: The following contains major spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3. Summary In 'The Walking Dead: Dead City' Season 3, Maggie finally embraces leadership, trusting Hershel and choosing to rebuild this new community. Maggie and Negan shift from enemies to an uneasy, sibling-like partnership of brutal care and trust. Season 3 is full of firsts: broken people, risky joy, and choosing new possibility over past pain. Everything that’s been building over the course of Season 3 of the AMC series The Walking Dead: Dead City came to a head in the finale, entitled “Tenebrae.” Maggie (Lauren Cohan) finally came to terms with just how much a part of her life Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) really is, and she decided to step into the leadership role that he had been pushing for all along. She also decided to trust that Hershel (Logan Kim) could hold his own and supported his involvement in their plan to take their new community back from those trying to take it and Negan down. Now, it will be interesting to see how this new dynamic evolves moving forward and what this civilization could become next. Collider recently got the opportunity to chat with Cohan about how this felt like “a season of firsts” for The Walking Dead and how that could affect things moving forward. During the interview, she discussed Maggie’s frame of mind, how all of these characters are broken in their own way, redefining Maggie and Negan’s relationship, why their dynamic reminds her of the one she has with her own brother, finding a balance between being a mother and being a leader, and where things could go next, in a possible Season 4. Lauren Cohan Says It Was Nice To Give Maggie a Bit of a Break in ‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’ Season 3 "This is such a season of firsts in our universe." Image via AMC COLLIDER: Having karaoke with a stripper pole in a bar is not a moment that you often get in The Walking Dead. What was it like to figure out who Maggie is when she just cuts loose and doesn’t have the weight of absolutely everything on her shoulders all at once? LAUREN COHAN: I feel like this is such a season of firsts in our universe. And not just Dead City, but The Walking Dead as a whole. It was amazing. It was funny because Maggie being tipsy, just on an actor level, when you’re with people who you know and you’re familiar with, it’s definitely easier to do that because you can imagine being merry with them. That part feels like, “Okay, cool, so now all I have to remember is, in some sense, this is more of a friendship with Jeff [Dean Morgan] than a Maggie dynamic with Negan." The episode leads up to a point where there’s a lot of relief for the group and they’ve taken a risk and it’s paid off, and it’s a whole new frame of mind for her. The only way through now is to do something different, and that applies across the board. When we did that episode, what made it so much fun was watching Jimmi [Simpson] and Aimee [Garcia] sing karaoke naturally makes you feel really relaxed and drunk-happy. There were definitely a lot of elements of uncharted territory, but also genuine fun in the episode and in a lot of moments during the season. The tension that Maggie has had for so long became these exercises for me. The tension of needing to see things a certain way or needing to keep rigid or keep your horse blinders on, or keep safe and keep people safe, or maintain a point of view, if you just remove that one thing, it’s the equivalent of suddenly being on the beach for a normal person. It was so fun for us to do it. We had so many moments like that this season. Maggie and Negan Are Both Just Doing the Best That They Can in ‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’ "I really believe, in life and in the show, that people are in your life for a reason." There’s the moment in the finale when Maggie says to Negan, “You’ve got me. We’re forever connected. We’re chained to one another.” She’s never going to forgive him, but they’ve moved past it. Is she the only one who can humanize him in that way? COHAN: People feel really connected to Negan in a lot of ways, and that’s testament to Jeff’s charisma and warmth and the relatability of Negan. He does these abhorrent things. He does less of them now, obviously. There’s just something relatable, even in his reactivity and how he traipses through life and what a broken person he is. Everybody that’s left is broken and is a patchwork of coping mechanisms. I hope they never change. Everybody is a total Tin Man. To answer that question now, to me, almost tries to get ahead of the way I might be able to say it when all of The Walking Dead is over, and I look back in five years at what it meant. I really believe, in life and in the show, that people are in your life for a reason, and you either continue to face the challenges that they bring up for you, or you say, “Thank you,” you move on, and you realize that it was a moment, or you kill them. There’s a million times when I've looked at it like, “She should have just killed him. When Rick stopped her, she should have pushed him out of the way and gone for it.” I always feel Hershel Sr. is on my shoulder, and I always feel like there’s a dichotomy in Maggie of a cut and dry brutality, trying to learn how to lead people and being a hugely compassionate person. There are so many moments within the season, and it isn’t completely magnanimous. He sees the good in Maggie and tells her, and I see the brokenness and the good in him and I tell him, and I thank him for how he’s helped. The archetypes of these characters have always been pretty front and center. If you think about what makes someone a hero, what makes someone brave, what makes someone a leader, what makes someone a fighter, and what makes someone just a little bit of some of those things some of the time, but also completely screwed up and fumbling through and not knowing what you’re doing, it’s a giant metaphor for parenting. Everybody’s just doing the best they can with the information that they have at the time. It’s the friction that comes from them both being around and both being in each other’s orbit that’s fascinating to me. It’s especially interesting this season because they’ve formed more of a partnership now. Throughout the season, she resisted being a leader, and it seems like finding a partnership is what allows her to be able to step into that leadership position. She hands him that badge and says she wants him to lead security while she’s in charge. Why do you think Negan saw her as a leader before she saw it in herself, and what do you think it is that really helped her finally see it? COHAN: When I think about that scene, or I think about the season, I feel how much he wants her forgiveness and how much he wants to help her and how much he cares for her, which is very natural. If you take away the main part of their history, I do think it’s like brother and sister. People 'ship Negan and Maggie so hard, but if I think about my relationship with my own brother, I give him shit, but I know what he’s capable of. You just have these little quirks, and there’s certain people in the world who can lovingly call them out and make fun of them but also know that you’re a fucking badass. I feel like that’s how Negan is to Maggie. To survive in this world, there are so many things, and not just in this world [of the show]. I really think you can get lost in the past or lost in resentment in life, and it’s like, “Am I going to, or am I going to find the best way to move forward?” What begins as, “I cannot forget this thing and I hate you, and I see everything you do through this lens” becomes, “You are synonymous with this thing, but I haven’t killed you and I’m not going to kill you” to, “Yes, this thing happened, but I’m focusing on something else right now. I’m choosing to focus on this” to, “If people can change in a lifetime -- and The Walking Dead, because of all the shit they go through, is somehow many, many lifetimes -- then maybe they can change monumentally in this one.” The leadership thing came about in an interesting way because I got fatigued by giving people these monikers. With Maggie, I don’t want it to just be, “Leader, mother, warrior.” What it led to in the season was a real working mother deciding if she can hold down a CEO job and still raise her kids. We wanted to put that inside the apocalypse, but not quite so literally as that. What permission do you need to give yourself to fulfill your own potential and still be there for your kids? The thing that I think allows it to happen this season is Hershel saying to Maggie at the beginning of the season, “I remember all the times you were there.” And then, we see the mentorship through Luis. We see that he doesn’t want her to hurt anymore, and he’s okay with her allowing Negan to be a part of this new world that they’re building and sees the strengths in him and wants to be a part of this community. She’s been so afraid to open up to the idea of these possibilities, as well as being with a new community and potentially failing again and losing people again. But I think she realizes that she did okay by her son. He is equipped to jump in and come on the ride. But it’s more than that. It’s never literal. It’s never just, “I’m going to literally just stare at and be with my child.” It’s more like, “Will I have the bandwidth?” It’s like teaching. If you can, you should. In ‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’ Season 3, Maggie Has Realized That Negan Is Family, for Better or Worse "Our skill sets complement each other." Image via AMC What do you think this new partnership between Maggie and Negan will be like? How do you see this new dynamic working out between them? COHAN: It’s funny, it goes back to the sibling thing. What’s been realized, without necessarily being explicitly said, is that our skill sets complement each other. That, for me, comes down to recognizing and encouraging him. Within the season, there’s the light versus the fight. But when it comes down to it and I say to him, “You’re the only one that understands the brutality that it really does take,” it’s not all sunshine and roses. It’s never going to be. Whether Maggie realizes it or not, there is this subconscious recognition that when the shit comes down, she can rely on him to do the thing that will keep people safe, which is his greatest pride, ironically, and his excuse for some of the insane things that he did. If you asked him, he would say that it was to protect his people. Maggie will never believe that. However, with the Negan that is now, she does believe that it’s possible. I think the most important thing that will influence them moving forward is that it’s like being family. They may not like each other all the time. She may still want to kill him sometimes. She may still find him insufferable. He may find her insufferable and stubborn. But Maggie and Negan have known each other the longest of anyone that we know that’s still living. Rick and Michonne, and Daryl and Carol, and Eugene -- these people are still alive, but we don’t know where they are. Maggie and Negan have known each other longer than she’s had her kid. They’ve been through the fire together, even if it has been inflicted by one or the other. From that basis, they will go into uncharted territory, in terms of building something new. I really think this could be the beginning of a huge, robust civilization, ironically born from the ashes of how they met. The Walking Dead: Dead City airs on AMC. Release Date June 15, 2023 Network AMC Showrunner Eli Jorne, Seth Hoffman Franchise(s) The Walking Dead Creator(s) Eli Jorne Seasons 3