The Walking Dead actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan believes the show’s numerous upcoming spinoffs should have been kept secret until the series ended. Morgan has starred as Negan in The Walking Dead since season 6 finale, playing the former leader of the villainous Saviors before warily becoming a close ally to the main cast of survivors. The Walking Dead‘s final season sees Negan trying to earn the trust of the main cast. This includes the development of a strained relationship with Lauren Cohan’s Maggie Rhee, whose husband Glenn was one of his first victims when Negan was introduced as an antagonist.
Negan and Maggie’s relationship is set to continue developing in an upcoming series, The Walking Dead: Dead City. The recently retitled Walking Dead spinoff will see Negan and Maggie in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic New York City, far from the final season’s current Virginia setting. While details on the show are sparse, it has been confirmed that Dead City will take place after the events of the flagship Walking Dead series.
Discussing the upcoming spinoff with Entertainment Weekly, Jeffrey Dean Morgan expressed dissatisfaction with how Negan and Maggie’s new series was announced. Morgan lamented the lack of secrecy associated with the spinoff, which reveals that Negan and Maggie will survive the events of the yet-to-end original show. He stated that, if it were in his hands, he would have handled the reveal of future shows differently:
“That’s not the way we should have gone about it. But this is how it was chosen to play out. And who knows? Maybe we couldn’t have kept the secret. But it seems to me we could have given it a shot. I would’ve tried to go about it in a different way, but look, that’s above my pay grade.”
Morgan and Cohan aren’t the only stars expected to return to the world of The Walking Dead after the parent show ends. Two other Walking Dead spinoffs are set to air next year as well. One sees Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon in France, while the other signals the return of Rick and Michonne Grimes after their departure from the series in earlier seasons. While Rick and Michonne’s fates had been left open for future exploration, the confirmation of a Daryl-focused spinoff puts the character in the same situation as Negan and Maggie, signaling his guaranteed survival through The Walking Dead‘s remaining episodes.
While it’s nice to know that fan-favorite characters like Negan, Maggie, and Daryl will survive to the end of The Walking Dead, Morgan’s unhappiness with when the spinoffs were announced is understandable. Discussion of who will survive in The Walking Dead has been a major talking point among viewers for as long as the show has been on the air. Announcing spinoffs starring three major characters still alive on the show could strip away tension in scenes where it looks like those characters’ lives hang in the balance. Regardless of their early announcements, AMC is still set to release The Walking Dead: Dead City alongside two other Walking Deadspinoff series in 2023.
Source: EW
