The Walking Dead: Dead City showrunner Eli Jorné reveals why Maggie and Negan are the main characters in the upcoming spinoff, and why it makes sense for them to lead the show. Announced during the final season of The Walking Dead, the upcoming Maggie and Negan-led sequel series sees the duo heading to New York City several years after the end of the flagship show. While the unlikely pair are in the Big Apple, The Walking Dead: Dead City promises a plethora of dangers from both humans and Walkers alike.
Speaking with Collider, Jorné reveals the importance of The Walking Dead: Dead City having Maggie and Negan in the starring roles. He discusses the tension between Maggie and Negan and how – coupled with their new environment – their interactions with one another will fuel the drama of the show. Check out what Jorné has to say below:
How do you work with and cooperate with, and how do you trust, if you have to work with the person who murdered the person you loved most in this life? And vice versa for Negan, how do you work with the person whose husband you murdered? Right away, to me, I was excited to get messy with that unfinished business.
If you think about it, there are these two characters that, if they’re forced together, and they are forced to work together, as you can tell from the teaser, and they go to a place that’s as crazy and claustrophobic and chaotic as New York, that just amps up. It turns the dial up on what’s challenging about this cooperative effort. I’m glad it’s New York. It’s hard to think of anywhere else they could’ve gone.
What We Know About The Walking Dead: Dead City
Jorné’s latest comments about The Walking Dead: Dead City underscore how important Maggie and Negan’s past with one another will be to the series as a whole. While Negan was redeemed by the end of The Walking Dead, Maggie was still unable to forgive him for killing Glenn back in season 7. The multi-year time jump and still-existing tension between the pair indicates that, in those years, they were never able to reconcile with one another. This makes their unlikely alliance in The Walking Dead: Dead City all the more tense, as Maggie requires Negan’s help yet still doesn’t fully trust him.
Drawing closer to the premiere of Dead City in June, avid The Walking Dead fans now know Maggie will be recruiting Negan to help her rescue her son, Hershel, after he is captured by a new antagonistic group. Their journey will take them to Manhattan, which has been isolated from the rest of the world ever since the first days of the zombie apocalypse. Because of New York City’s geographical isolation throughout all of The Walking Dead, Maggie and Negan will have to learn how to deal with a world wholly unfamiliar to them, while also dealing with each other. The tension between the two as they try and rescue the young Hershel Rhee exhibits why it’s so important from a storytelling perspective for both of them to go to the Big Apple.
The duo are also set to be tested in ways that will force them to change in order to survive in their new environment. While Maggie’s story arc will be very dark as she tries to search for her missing son, Jeffrey Dean Morgan has previously said that Negan may slip into his old ways during The Walking Dead: Dead City. While that doesn’t necessarily mean Negan will become a villain again, it may indicate he will be making questionable decisions that harken back to when Negan was a Savior, heightening the tension between him and Maggie even further. Because they will be forced to work together to save Hershel, Maggie and Negan are being set up to make The Walking Dead: Dead City an exciting experience for fans of the characters and The Walking Dead audiences as a whole.
