Angela Kang indicates The Walking Dead season 10 bonus episodes will answer questions about Maggie’s return. A featured character beginning in season 2, Lauren Cohan’s Maggie Rhee became a TWD fan favorite over the years, but sadly exited the show in season 9 as Cohan left to pursue other opportunities.
Though fans were certainly disappointed to see Maggie leave with a lot of unresolved issues still hanging in the air (particularly her relationship with her husband Glenn’s murderer Negan), the show provided reassurance of a possible return by sending the character away rather than killing her off. Indeed, Cohan’s other opportunities (namely the one-and-done ABC show Whiskey Cavalier) ultimately didn’t pan out and the door was opened for Maggie to return. After Maggie’s arrival back on the show for season 10 was teased, the COVID-altered finale delivered the reunion fans had been waiting for, though with a curveball twist that seemingly indicated Maggie’s involvement with the long-awaited group the Commonwealth (who apparently employ masked ninjas).
Maggie’s return in the Walking Dead season 10 finale was certainly a happy development for fans of the character, but much was indeed left mysterious about what she was up to in the years she was absent, and how she became associated with her new friends. In a New York Comic Con panel appearance, TWD showrunner Angela Kang indicated that answers will be coming about Maggie’s activities in one of the promised season 10 bonus episodes arriving in 2021. Kang said, “We’re really going to see an episode with Maggie when she comes back since we just got to see her for a little bit in the finale that just aired.”
Cohan herself also recently discussed the Maggie-centric bonus episode coming up, saying “The first episode of the ‘bridge’ is, for me, the most exciting Walking Dead episode I’ve ever read.” The “bridge” Cohan refers to is of course a planned six episode bloc of stories that extend season 10 before season 11 proper begins. As Kang herself explained recently, COVID-related restrictions led to these bridge episodes which are smaller and more character-oriented, as the show is unable to shoot big action scenes with health protocols in place.
Though it may be bad news that The Walking Dead is unable to proceed as normal thanks to COVID restrictions, it’s potentially great news that the show is now set to go smaller and more intimate and focus on character for this six episode stretch leading into season 11. Fans certainly have many questions about what Maggie has been up to, how she became associated with the Commonwealth, and what her reappearance means for her friends (Eugene and company certainly got a shock with the arrival of Maggie’s apparent cohorts in West Virginia). It seems many of these answers will be coming relatively quickly, as The Walking Dead fans get a big dose of Maggie to help tide them over until the show gets the greenlight to return to staging its usual epic zombie action.
