Jeffrey Dean Morgan dismisses claims of a Maggie-Negan romance

With The Walking Dead having wrapped up last year, we’re now onto the next era of the franchise, where the story will continue through a slate of exciting spinoff projects. The first is The Walking Dead: Dead City, which follows the unlikely duo of Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as they travel to a zombie-infested Manhattan in search of Maggie’s son Hershel, who has been kidnapped.

Of course, the idea of Maggie and Negan working together seems preposterous at first. He brutally murdered her husband Glenn and reigned terror over her community for years, right? While that’s true, he’s also a good person to have by your side in a fight, and she needs him to get her son back. Not to mention, Negan has a history with the Croat, the mysterious villain who kidnapped Hershel.

Given that they’re gonna be spending a whole lot of time with each other this season, some fans think we could see a romance blossom between Maggie and Negan. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is having none of that. “I don’t see that happening any time in the future,” he told Collider. “I am incredibly amused by it. I find it fascinating that people are shipping them because when I watched the show and when we were playing these scenes, what’s really fascinating is that she might kill me at any minute, or he may kill her.”

The classic “enemies to lovers” trope is a classic, but it has limits, people.

Lauren Cohan reveals the original opening scene of The Walking Dead: Dead City

The Walking Dead: Dead City opens with Maggie, broken and traumatized, looking over Manhattan, wondering how she’s going to get Hershel back. In her anger she kills a walker, hitting it in a way that reminds viewers of how Negan bashed Glenn’s skull in with Lucille way back when. It’s a heavy opening that sets the tone for what’s to come, and it almost didn’t happen.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Cohan explained that the show was initially going to begin very differently. “It originally opened in the bar scene,” she said. “We wanted to better place people in the backstory of the show. That was partly for people who’d been away from the show for a minute, or who had never been with the show. But also, just tonally, it felt right“

Adding the scene was definitely a good move. It set the mood and clued us in about Maggie’s headspace.

The Walking Dead: Dead City continues Sundays on AMC. That’s one episode down, five more to go! The series is getting good reviews. We certainly enjoyed it:

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