It's safe to say that The Walking Dead franchise has been around for a long time. The AMC juggernaut has been on screens since the original series premiered back in 2010 and it genuinely hasn't looked back since. From those peak years in the midst of its run to the extensive continuation of the TWD Universe story via the relatively recent spinoffs, it has endured through the ages.
Throughout that time, it has seen a number of eras come to an end. Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes left the original series, that original series came to an end, OG spinoff Fear The Walking Dead concluded shortly afterwards, and Rick and Michonne's story got wrapped up too. Those are just some of the examples.
As the franchise prepares for another in the upcoming conclusion of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, another ending awaits in the upcoming third season of The Walking Dead: Dead City. It's not an ending for the show, but more of one for the characters involved.
Maggie and Negan will no longer be enemies in Dead City season 3
It's almost time for The Walking Dead: Dead City season 3 to premiere on AMC and AMC+ and, with that, will come the end of a major era for the TWD franchise. The season, which premieres on both platforms on Sunday, July 26, will see Maggie Rhee and Negan officially start a new chapter of their lives as friends in a bid to help rebuild Manhattan for the next generation of survivors.
It sounds absurd to say, but the spinoff is actually doing it, bringing the two long-standing enemies together in a way that it never has before. And it's all down to new showrunner Seth Hoffman, who is hoping that the show's new approach to the pair's long-standing relationship could usher in a new era for Dead City - and, potentially, even the TWD Universe as a whole.
The first footage from the spinoff's third season features the pair laughing with each other, smiling at one another, and even enjoying a bit of banter - a far cry from their well-documented, uneasy relationship on both The Walking Dead and Dead City's first two seasons.
Maggie and Negan's relationship is a TWD tale as old as time. When the latter made his debut on the original Walking Dead series in its season 6 finale (and season 7), he attempted to get back at Rick Grimes' group of survivors for targetting his men. As a result, he brutally killed Abraham Ford and Glenn Rhee - the latter of whom was Maggie's husband. After witnessing the heartbreaking sight while pregnant with their son Hershel, Maggie vowed revenge.
She spent the better part of two seasons trying to kill Negan, even after Rick defeated and imprisoned him. Nothing else mattered to her; the character who had become known to Negan as only "The Widow" was hellbent on killing him for what he had done. She relented in that mission when she discovered that he wanted to die as he could no longer live with what he had done while imprisoned. And with that, she sentenced him to do just that.
Maggie left The Walking Dead for a long period of time and, by the time that she returned at the end of season 10, Negan was a changed man. Now an ally to the survivors and keeping Rick's group safe during his absence, Negan had formed a bond with Rick's daughter Judith - which ultimately catapulted his redemption arc. Although he became an uneasy ally of Maggie's, she never trusted him and even threatened to kill him on occasion once again.
The series finale of The Walking Dead marked something of a turning point in their uneasy dynamic. Maggie officially acknowledged that Negan had changed as a man and that she respected, noticed, and appreciated his efforts to be a better person to atone for his sins, but she added that could never forgive him for what he did. And with that, they parted - no longer enemies, but far, far from friends.
They found themselves in an uneasy dynamic again when Dead City premiered as Maggie specifically needed Negan's help in resucing her son Hershel from one of Negan's old friends known as The Croat. Although some of this felt like we were going back over familiar territory - especially as The Walking Dead had just ended the year prior to Dead City's premiere - it made sense within the narrative given their history.
Even that feels like a far cry from where the two are in season 3. Despite Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan's incredible on-screen chemistry, it's still unreal to see the pair chatting over drinks or having a laugh given their history. Whether you think back to the early days of Negan's reign of terror or even the uneasy alliance the pair established towards the end of the show, not a single moment in their history could have prepared you for their friendship era. And you can rest assured that fans will have a lot to say about it.
The Walking Dead: Dead City season 3 premieres on AMC and AMC+ on Sunday, July 26.
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