The Walking Dead: Dead City — Can Maggie and Negan Bring Out the Best In Each Other?

This story contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead CIty.

“All I have are my memories, and I don’t want to remember Glenn like that.”

These were the last words spoken by Maggie Rhee in The Walking Dead finale to Negan, the man that killed her husband Glenn many years before, as they finally sat down for a heart-to-heart after spending much of the season grudgingly working together for the good of their shared home, Alexandria. This was said as a part of her agreement to lay down the fight between her and Negan while acknowledging that even to look at him was to see all he took from her.

Now, less than a year down the line, Maggie and Negan are back for the 6-episode Dead City as the first among a series of The Walking Dead spin-offs planned for the coming months. Given their prominence in the closing arc of the original series and this new opportunity to continue their story, it’s safe to say that this has become one of the definitive duos of the ongoing drama that is The Walking Dead. As for why these two and their emotionally fraught team-ups are so popular among fans, well, as with the rest of their story, it’s complicated.

Better Places to go Than Nowhere

On the surface, Negan and Maggie couldn’t be more different. Maggie grew up loved and protected, but couldn’t escape the harsh realities of the newly apocalyptic world. Over several seasons, we’ve watched her lose absolutely everything and then some as one of the last standing of the Greene family we met back in the second season; her home, her father, her siblings, her husband, and, at times, even herself.

Now, she keeps her son Hershel close and takes on increasingly dangerous missions, ostensibly to keep him safe although her willingness to put herself in the line of fire again and again might indicate darker motivations. The guilt and death that surrounds her have understandably taken a heavy toll on her mental well-being over the years, and the Maggie we know today is a different person than the one we met long ago on the Greene family farm.

As much as Maggie has become defined by revenge and survivalism, Negan has changed for the better. After nearly breaking Rick Grimes, Negan was taken out of power as the community at Alexandria rose up around Rick to put a stop to Negan and his gang, the Saviors. He was forced to see that Rick’s true power is that, at his best moments, he was able to lead and grow his group through kindness and mercy rather than force, and that made them stronger. This led to a lengthy existential crisis for Negan as he sat in a jail cell in Alexandria for years, befriending Rick’s daughter Judith and eventually (mostly) turning over a new leaf.

Still, flashes of the “old Negan” are sprinkled throughout the final season of The Walking Dead, leaving a bit of doubt tucked into the series’ assertion that people can change. Now, he has left his wife Annie behind with their child, believing it’s what’s best for them, but taking responsibility for protecting another wayward youth with Ginny. Meanwhile, as Maggie has grown only more ruthless over the years, the adjoining theme is that once change occurs, it can never be undone, making these two near-perfect philosophical counterparts to one another.

New York: Dead City

In Dead City, Negan and Maggie are off to New York. This is one of the franchise’s rare forays into a bonafide metropolis after the first season’s ill-fated trip to Atlanta, in which Rick encountered hordes of the undead and barely escaped with his life. Maggie’s son Hershel has been kidnapped, and the only man that might be able to help her save him is, you guessed it, Negan. Separating them from their respective groups and sending them off on what might turn out to be a doomed mission into the heart of a city swarming with walkers, chances are that whatever peace has been made between them is soon to be shaken once more.

For some fans, the conversation around what these two will get up to in New York has boiled down to whether there is a simmering attraction between Negan and Maggie buried underneath all the hatred and betrayal. Yet, the connection between these two is significantly harder to define than a questionable romantic entanglement during the zombie apocalypse, and that’s a good thing, as it’s always been the subtle similarities in Maggie and Negan’s respective moral codes that their relationship thrives. Anything that happens between them will always be in the aftermath of what they have lost and, with that as the foundation of their interactions, each seems incapable of moving past one another in any kind of a constructive or healthy way. 

Negan is often portrayed as an emotionally abandoned boy that grew into a man full of anger and regret, trying to find community but more often than not fundamentally misunderstanding what that entailed. The Greenes however remain perhaps the most wholesome characters of the original series, which is why watching them be rapidly destroyed by the ins and outs of the apocalypse has been one of the most devastating subplots of The Walking Dead universe.

The path that Negan and Maggie walk is much the same

With Glenn’s son Hershel, Negan is forced to interact with a boy that never met his father due to his own shocking acts of violence. Likewise, Maggie’s desperate attempts to keep the boy safe seem at least equally rooted in the idea that she might be able to retroactively protect her loved ones. As such, even with everything that took place in the final season, these two seem again to be at a standstill, with Negan as the unstoppable force and Maggie the immovable object. This indicates that, although they got there differently, the path that Negan and Maggie walk is much the same.

No One Ever Thinks They’re The Bad Guy

Acknowledging that Negan has changed doesn’t allow Maggie to forgive him, and knowing that he hurt Maggie irreversibly doesn’t grant Negan the power to take it back. And so their motivations are seemingly diametrically opposed, with Negan’s reflections on the by-any-means-necessary violence of his past clashing with Maggie’s need to protect the last remnant of her once-thriving family. The desire to move on is there for them both, but they keep doing it wrong, which can be a painfully relatable thing to watch for anyone who has struggled with forgiveness or remorse.

As time has gone on, the lines that separate these two have blurred to the point that they barely exist, both exhibiting nearly identical levels of moral and emotional complexity as they continue to do everything they can to survive. What happens after survival seems to be the question that neither of them can bring themselves to ask, but they may yet help each other get there together. While it would be easy to name other The Walking Dead duos that seemed to bring out the worst in each other, from Rick and the Governor to Carol and Alpha and beyond, the hope behind the Maggie and Negan dynamic is that they may yet find a way to bring out the best.

For fans, this has long proved to be a combustible pair, with some adamantly opposed to Negan in his entirety while others were happy with the two going their separate ways back in Season 9. For others, watching these two try and fail to come to terms with each other is the kind of heartwrenching TWD soap opera that has long defined the series. As for The Walking Dead as an ongoing story, Maggie and Negan achieve things that other iconic team-ups like Carol and Darryl or Rick and Michonne don’t. Embodying the inability to move on from the past and foiling one another’s attempts to do so by their mere existence, these two ask us, “How do we heal when the things that hurt us haven’t gone away?”