The latest episode of AMC's The Walking Dead entitled “Walk With Us” brought the return of Magna (Nadia Hilker), a character who went missing along with Connie (Lauren Ridloff) during the mid-season premiere. While Magna returned disguised as a walker during the battle between The Whisperers’ and The Hilltop community, Connie’s fate is still hanging in the balance - is Connie still alive?
The Walking Dead season 10 follows the survivors from Alexandria and Hilltop as they wage a war against The Whisperers, a barbaric group of survivors who wear the skin of walkers in order to walk amongst them undetected. During the mid-season premiere “Squeeze,” Carol (Melissa McBride), Daryl (Norman Reedus), Aaron (Ross Marquand), Kelly (Angel Theory), Jerry (Cooper Andrews), Connie, and Magna are trapped inside of a cave surrounded by Alpha’s (Samantha Morton) horde of walkers. After traveling through the caves and finally happening upon an escape route, the cave begins to collapse after Carol sets off a stick of dynamic with the intention of thinning out Alpha’s herd of walkers. While many of them have the chance to escape the cave through a small aperture in the ground, Connie and Magna get trapped inside when the cave collapses. However, in the latest episode “Walk With Us,” Magna returns to The Hilltop community without Connie.
In the beginning of “Walk With Us,” Magna is spotted by Yumiko (Eleanor Matsuura) emerging from the horde of walkers attacking The Hilltop. While her appearance first suggests that Magna died and became a walker during the cave-in, it is revealed within the same scene that Magna is alive and simply applied blood to her face so she could disguise herself and blend in with the horde of Alpha’s walkers. Escaping from Hilltop with Yumiko, Carol, and Eugene (Josh McDermitt), Magna details to Yumiko how she got separated from Connie. After the cave-in, Magna describes how she and Connie crawled back into the cave, tried to find another way out, and accidentally came upon the horde of walkers. Still shaken by the experience, Magna vaguely states that Connie's hand slipped out of hers and she lost Connie within the crowd of walkers.
When Connie didn’t return with Magna during this week’s episode, it immediately raised a red flag regarding the character’s future within the series. However, before fans of The Walking Dead add Connie’s name to season 10’s list of casualties, fans will be comforted to know that there’s a more practical reason Connie’s been missing from the show. Lauren Ridloff, the actress known for portraying Connie, may simply be taking a short hiatus from The Walking Dead after landing a leading role in the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe film, The Eternals. Ever since Ridloff’s addition to the ensemble cast of The Eternals was announced during the 2019 San Diego Comic Con, Connie’s future within the series has been in flux, especially since the production schedule for the MCU movie overlapped with the filming of The Walking Dead over the fall of 2019.
According to Angela Kang, the current showrunner of The Walking Dead, the script was adjusted to have Connie be one of the characters who gets trapped during the cave-in, in part to accommodate Ridloff’s scheduling conflict. The Walking Dead has been known for accommodating their cast in the past to allow them to be part of other productions, including when Danai Gurira played Okoye in the MCU films Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame.
Similarly, when Lauren Cohan landed the leading role in the series Whiskey Cavalier, her character Maggie Rhee suddenly joined the record collector Georgie (Jayne Atkinson) on the road, which provided an easy and quick solution for the character’s absence that also allowed for the possibility of Maggie's return. Since Ridloff’s circumstances are similar, it seems unlikely that Connie was killed off from The Walking Dead since her death was never shown onscreen, leaving an opening for Connie’s eventual return to the series.