“Walking Dead: Dead City” Finale: Lauren Cohan Says Glenn Plays a Part in Maggie’s Choice to Keep Negan Alive (Exclusive)

“Glenn wouldn’t want [Maggie] to be in that perpetual pain of resentment,” says Lauren Cohan

Warning: This article contains spoilers for AMC’s The Walking Dead: Dead City.

NEED TO KNOW

• Maggie chooses not to let Negan die in season 3’s Walking Dead: Dead City finale, marking a turning point in their fraught relationship after Glenn’s death
• Lauren Cohan tells PEOPLE that Glenn wouldn’t want Maggie consumed by resentment, which has affected her relationship with their son, Hershel
• “It’s really difficult to stay angry at someone. The person you hurt most is yourself,” says Cohan

Maggie’s ready to let go of her anger toward Negan.

When Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) offers to turn himself over to Dillard (Jimmi Simpson) to be killed to protect Maggie (Lauren Cohan), her son Hershel (Logan Kim) and their New York City community in the season 3 finale of The Walking Dead: Dead City, she refuses to let him become a martyr.

It’s a dramatic step forward in their complicated adversary-turned-frenemy dynamic, nearly eight years after Negan brutally murdered Maggie’s husband, Glenn (Steven Yeun), in the flagship series’ season 7 premiere. 

The disagreement leads to an emotionally mature conversation between the two, during which Maggie admits that while she’ll never forgive Negan for killing Glenn, they are stuck with one another.

“I’m not losing anybody else. I’ve lost enough,” Maggie tells Negan in the finale after turning down multiple opportunities to kill him in the season’s penultimate episode. “We are forever connected, Negan. We are outright chained to one another. I’m not saying it because I like it, but you are like a shadow that I can’t shake.” 

“I’m never gonna forgive you — not ever — but we have moved past it and not further apart,” she continues about Glenn’s death. “What I do know is aside from my son, you are the closest thing to family that I’ve got left.”

Cohan, 44, tells PEOPLE that Negan can partially thank Glenn for Maggie’s change of heart over time.

“What was always interesting about their progression is that it’s really difficult to stay angry at someone. The person you hurt most is yourself,” says Cohan of the animosity Maggie has felt for Negan since losing Glenn, adding that her former flame would want more for his wife.

“Glenn wouldn’t want her to be in that perpetual pain of resentment,” she continues, noting how that pain even fractured her relationship with their son. “Hershel has lost his mother to it, as we learned in season 2. And it makes her half of herself.”

“Maggie doesn’t forgive Negan,” adds the actress, emphasizing the episode’s choice to explicitly state that for its fan base, but says that she empathizes with Negan after seeing how Ginny’s death at the end of season 2 has adversely affected him.

“She sees the pain that he’s experiencing after the loss of Ginny, and the heart in her and the human in her doesn’t want anybody to be stuck in their lowest version of themselves and their lowest belief of themselves,” says Cohan, who also serves as an executive producer on Dead City alongside Morgan, 60. 

Of course, there are some more practical — and selfish — reasons for wanting to keep Negan alive. In the season’s penultimate episode, Maggie tells Negan that killing him would be “the beginning of the end” of the New York City community they helped build. 

“It’s dually motivated because I want a better world for my kid,” says Cohan, who hopes that Maggie can continue moving toward a more familiar version of herself in the show’s future. “I want to remember what it’s like to be season-2 Maggie, who found joy in things and was fully expressive in terms of meeting new friends and believing in the future.”

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Of Maggie finally letting go of her resentment toward Negan, Cohan says, “It’s like pulling out a splinter, honestly. And that’s why we see such a different version of [Maggie] this year.”

“She’s the version I met and I fell in love with, who grabbed life by the reins, literally [and] figuratively,” Cohan continues. “There’s every reason that she could have just shut that down, tried to move on.”

Looking back on Maggie and the group’s complicated relationship with Negan over the years on The Walking Dead, Cohan acknowledges the argument for killing him off the show in 2018 and why Maggie once wanted him dead.

“I think I empathize with wanting to have killed him and wanting Rick to follow through with it because that was the world emotionally that they were in at the time,” Cohan says of the season 8 finale, in which Rick (Andrew Lincoln) had an opportunity to kill Negan and instead decided to mercifully jail him, much to Maggie’s dismay at the time.

“I think it would have probably given her some relief to have that immediate retribution,” she adds.

Nearly a decade later, Cohan says Maggie’s growth has led to a deeper self-reflection that ultimately helped her when Negan’s life was finally left in her hands at the end of Dead City‘s season 3.

“As time’s gone on, what I know about Maggie is that she is a deeply compassionate person, she’s a protective person and she’s a fighter,” says Cohan. “You don’t have all those things if you don’t believe in a greater good, and I think she has struggled herself with moving into a world where you have to sometimes kill to survive.”

“By killing [Negan], I think that would’ve hardened her,” she adds. “I think it’s this rare opportunity to go back to someone who keeps their heart open in a world where you’re literally stabbing things left, right and center to stay alive.”

While AMC has yet to renew Dead City for a fourth season, Cohan says the creative team is already looking ahead. 

“We have a lot of ideas that are outside the box for another season,” says Cohan, adding, “If it can surprise Jeff [Morgan] and I, it will surprise the fans.” 

The Walking Dead: Dead City is available to stream on AMC+. The first two seasons are also available to binge on Netflix.

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