Lauren Cohan Teases A Potentially Huge Turn For Maggie In The Walking Dead Season 11

The end is soon to begin for AMC's "The Walking Dead." The eleventh and final season of the long-running zombie drama is officially set to debut on August 22, 2021. The show will air its final 24-episodes in three, eight-part chunks that'll keep the series going through sometime in 2022. With each installment of the season trilogy, long-time fans of "The Walking Dead" can expect shocking twists, tons of zombified gore, and loads of tearful goodbyes. Still, even as those fans ponder such endless possibilities alongside the feasible return of Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes, the series' endgame remains a mystery to one and all.

If there's one narrative certainty in Season 11 of "The Walking Dead," it's that Lauren Cohan's Maggie will have to deal with Jeffery Dean Morgan's infamous, yet mostly-reformed big bad Negan. He is, after all, the man who brutally murdered her beloved Glenn (Steven Yuen) in the series' Season 7 premiere. Given everything Maggie and her faction went through in their brutal war with Negan and his Saviors, she was understandably incensed when Rick gave Negan a pass after that crew was finally defeated, commuting his sentence from death to life in prison, from which he was ultimately paroled.

And yes, in a recent Entertainment Weekly interview promoting the new season of "The Walking Dead," Cohan confirmed that dealing with Negan will be big part of Maggie's Season 11 arc. "There's this furnace internally of whatever the conflict is with Negan that you don't really have time to deal with," she said. 

That's hardly a surprise, as the final shot of the Season 10 finale featured the pair menacingly staring each other down as Alexandria is rebuilt around them. In fact, the pair's unavoidable showdown has been expected since the moment Lauren Cohan's "The Walking Dead" return was announced. Per that EW interview, however, Cohan teased Maggie's internal furnace may not boil over into the fiery act of vengeance fans are expecting.

"Let's say she kills Negan, and it seems like it's the solution to the problem. If she lets herself go down that road, I think she has truly let go of who she was. This is just Lauren speaking, but I think there's something to be gained for how they could reach a resolution. And I don't think Maggie's consciously thinking this, but she does know that if she lets that dark wave sort of crest and wash over her, then it's over. Everything you have struggled to keep alive in all these years as you've traipsed the earth, looking for a better life and a life worth living, it's over."

It should be noted that Cohan also claims in the interview she doesn't yet know how things end for Maggie. It seems she's holding out hope that her fan-favorite character finds a way to maintain her humanity rather than give over to a desire to take her long-delayed vengeance on Negan. We'll just have to wait and see if series' creatives feel the same way.