[The following contains spoilers for The Walking Dead season 11]
The Walking Dead season 11 star Lauren Cohan says she wanted Maggie to kill this character. The eleventh and final season of AMC’s long-running drama set after the zombie apocalypse got off to a tense start in late August with the episodes “Acheron: Part I” and “Acheron: Part II.”
The season debut saw the residents of Alexandria suffering a massive food shortage and being forced to extreme lengths in order to procure sustenance (including raiding a military base filled with sleeping walkers). With the desperate town’s needs still not met after this first dangerous supply run, Maggie was compelled to lead a group into the ruins of Washington DC in search of precious supply caches left there by her old friend Georgie. In order to navigate the city, Maggie made the difficult choice to bring her mortal enemy Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) along. But Negan of course didn’t buy that Maggie forced him on the mission just for his navigational skills – he believed it was part of a ploy by Maggie to kill him, a fact he made plain in an angry exchange during which he brutally brought up his murder of Maggie’s husband Glenn. The premiere episode wrapped up with Maggie in mortal danger, being dragged off the back of a subway train by walkers, while Negan stood above seemingly letting her die.
But in typical Walking Dead fashion it was revealed in “Acheron: Part II” that Maggie did not indeed die at the end of part I but lived to catch up with the group as they worked their way back through the walker-infested subway train. Her eventual confrontation with Negan was of course emotional after he allowed her to nearly die, but for some reason, Maggie refused to take advantage of the situation and kill Negan once and for all. Many TWD fans no doubt wanted Maggie to plunge a sharp object into a typically remorseless Negan right then and there, and it turns out Maggie actress Cohan felt the same way. She told EW:
I just wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill him. I wanted Maggie to just shoot him. The fact that I want that and she wants that, then she doesn't do it — that's why I'm like, okay, she's keeping this this hope of overcoming this animal anger. There's a tiny little thread of like, "I got to keep that alive. I got to keep this respect for life alive." [Negan actor Morgan] is so good too, because, when I watch the episode and I'm like, "S---, I could see why Negan's so scared of her, that this can happen.”
In fact later in the same Walking Dead episode Maggie showed she’s maybe not so different from Negan when it comes to making calculated moves based on an instinct for self-preservation. Another member of the group named Gage became trapped inside a locked subway car with walkers coming toward him and instead of opening the door and saving Gage but perhaps allowing the walkers through, Maggie ordered that the door be kept locked, leaving Gage to be ripped apart in full view of everyone.
So clearly Maggie is capable of making hard life-or-death decisions when necessary but she also is unwilling to actively take a life, even if that life belongs to the despicable Negan. It remains to be seen if Maggie’s thinking ever changes on that, but for now The Walking Dead seems content to milk the dynamic between the Cohan and Morgan's characters for all the drama it can. Fans are of course on Maggie’s side, as Negan has long been hated, despite his turn in recent seasons toward some kind of redemption (a redemption that now seems out of reach after his recent reversion to more classically Negan-like form).
Source: EW