SPOILER WARNING: The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 1 “Acheron: Part 1”
The Walking Dead premiere left fans questioning if Negan has gone back to his old ways. Is Maggie dead? Probably not. Can Negan ever be trusted? Who knows. Could he just be paranoid? Maybe. I guess we’ll find out in the next episode of TWD’s final season.
The two-part premiere hits the road when Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Daryl (Norman Reedus) leading a small group of survivors en route to Meridian on a mission to save Alexandria. They enlist Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) to guide them through Washington D.C. The mission goes awry when a violent storm forces the group to go underground into a subway tunnel full of walkers.
The Walking Dead premiere part 1 ends with Negan choosing not to help Maggie escape a horde of zombies. He leaves her just as she looses her grip on a subway car and falls to the walkers below.
“Maggie and Negan, there’s just no love lost between them. They don’t trust each other, and why should they, given the history that has preceded them up to this point,” said showrunner Angela Kang on The Walking Dead: Episode Insider. “After Glenn was killed in front of Maggie, and [Negan] just seemed to find such glee in that, I don’t feel that Maggie is at a place where she thinks she is ever going to forgive this person. And I think for Negan’s part, he feels like he’s been on a journey to try and redeem himself, and it’s been a bumpy one.”
Negan suspected that Maggie lead him to the tunnels so she could kill him to avenge her husband’s death. It looked as if she led him away from the others for a planned murder.
Did Negan go back to being a villain?
“This is not a person who is, by any means, perfect. I think there’s a lot of times that he is definitely in a gray area, maybe even still in a villainous area. But he’s trying, and she’s not been privy to a lot of that,” Kang explained. “So he feels like her view of him is stuck back when she came and was going to, as a vigilante, take him out [in Season 9]. She just left him to rot in jail. So I think, on either side, the lack of trust is absolutely warranted.”
“If you’re Negan, of course you think she’s gonna try to take you out,” Kang continued. “She did it once, why wouldn’t she do it again? For Maggie’s part, I think she recognizes, very reluctantly, that this is a person who is formidable and can be a resource, but she doesn’t trust him. So I think they’re really starting the season just as far apart as they can possibly be.”
Whatever happens next and if Maggie does survive her fall to the flesh-eating doom that awaits her, Maggie and Negan may have to call a truce and work together against the new baddies of the Walking Dead — the Reapers.
The second part of the Walking Dead premiere debuts this Sunday, August 29th on AMC or catch Part 1 and 2 now on AMC+ with a subscription.
