Lauren Cohan talks Maggie in New York on The Walking Dead: Dead City

Dalton Ross
·3 min read
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All things considered, Maggie Rhee ended in a pretty good place at the conclusion of The Walking Dead. She saved her son. She saved the Commonwealth. She (kind of) forgave Negan for brutally murdering her husband. And she was back at the Hilltop.

Of course, nothing stays good for very long in the world of The Walking Dead, and it seems the good times will no longer be rolling when things pick back up in April on AMC's Maggie and Negan spin-off, The Walking Dead: Dead City. That's according to Maggie herself, Lauren Cohan.

"We end up picking up in New York at the bottom of a really unexpected mountain," Cohan tells EW, "where maybe things have gone well for a period of time, but we're back at this challenge, just like these challenges that always seem to keep cropping up."

Dead City
Dead City

AMC Lauren Cohan on 'The Walking Dead: Dead City'

Dead City will pick up a few years after the conclusion of the mothership series, and the question remains as to what happened in those unseen years that ultimately leads the dysfunctional duo north to New York City. Whatever it is, it's not good. "Nothing is through rose-colored glasses," says Cohan of the journey. "Because the thing that comes up, it's like, okay, so we overcame this obstacle of the Commonwealth and these things, that doesn't mean life is easy just because you quashed one enemy. And the enemy is this moving target. It's also the enemy within."

While Cohan will not reveal the specific event or incident that gets her and Negan back together in the Big Apple, she does mention the word "parenting" a few times in our chat, and also reveals that, "When we go into the new show, Maggie's greatest weakness is definitely exploited." Could that mean her son Hershel's safety is at risk? Then again, parenting is a pretty big deal, and Cohan also notes that "Sometimes it's not the big things that are the hard things, it's the little things. And those little things become very, very big things because they are our own blind spots, and they are our own greatest weakness."

Dead City
Dead City

AMC Lauren Cohan (center) and Jeffrey Dean Morgan on 'Walking Dead: Dead City'

Bottom line: Who knows what the hell she's talking about. But it's clear that the cease fire between Maggie and Negan that we saw on The Walking Dead finale may have… well, ceased. Jeffrey Dean Morgan told EW that Negan will be reverting to some of his old ways after being separated from the group, and Cohan teases that "It's going to be really, really hard for her to continue, even with the best intentions she had of letting Negan have his territory and her getting on with her life and finding the hope and trying to build this future."

It also sounds like the new, unfamiliar territory of a zombie-infested New York City will not help matters either: "She has to go through this new terrain of going into New York City. That's going to be really difficult and physically challenging."

Translation: Nothing is going to be easy for Maggie. But if there is one thing we have learned about the character after she lost her mother… and her stepmother… and her stepbrother… and her father… and her sister… and her husband… and too many friends to mention, it's that she possesses an incredible resilience in the face of unthinkable adversity. "It feels really important to me now with how we move forward with the story," says Cohan, "Because the reality of a life of extreme friction and challenge is that you need to keep moving forward."

That move forward begins in April on AMC.

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