I Really Need Maggie To Move on From Glenn in 'The Walking Dead: Dead City'

Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 Episode 1.We can all collectively agree that Glenn's (Steven Yeun) death was probably the most traumatizing one in The Walking Dead franchise, which is truly a feat considering the show is known for its sheer brutality and blood. As awful as it was for audiences, I can't even imagine how Maggie (Lauren Cohan) must've felt witnessing Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) sauntering around the half-circle of her friends and family only to pick out her husband and father of her unborn child, then whack him until his eyes were bulging out. So, I can't blame her for carrying around the trauma of that night and an insatiable thirst for vengeance well into the series, even during her spin-off show, The Walking Dead: Dead City with Negan. Hell, even Negan has said that she should never get over what he did.

All that being said, I firmly believe that Maggie needs to get over it. While it may sound insensitive (and probably is), for the sake of good TV, Maggie needs to move past the death of Glenn and, namely, her blind hatred for Negan. The Walking Dead has frequently been criticized for falling into repetitive cycles, and Maggie's obsession is now one of them, becoming detrimental to both the show's storytelling and her own characterization.

'The Walking Dead: Dead City' Was Built on Maggie's Hate for Negan

Maggie carried the burden of this vengeance for five seasons in the flagship show, but with the immense cast and Cohan's Season 9 hiatus, the impact of this need for vengeance didn't land as hard in Dead City. It worked well at the beginning of Season 1, where the concept of enemies forced to go on the road together was an appealing one, especially if Negan was involved. Maggie's all-consuming hatred was integral to the show's premise and marketing, and while I thank her for it, I also expected some kind of growth by the end of the season. Usually it is the enemies-to-something arc -- Dead City just becomes stagnant.

Maggie may not have outright killed Negan, and did have a strange, conflicting moment when she finally hand-delivered him to the Croat (Željko Ivanek), but as Negan pointed out, they could've saved Hershel (Logan Kim) together if she wasn't so doggedly determined to sell him out. If anything, she deprived us of another glorious Negan-Maggie team-up fighting scene for something that happened an entire series ago. I don't expect them to become best buddies — otherwise how else would we get Negan's hilarious quips as he tries to push her buttons — but the appeal of the enemies' dynamic can only be dragged out for so long.

Maggie's Blind Hatred Feeds Into 'The Walking Dead' Fatal Flaw

Maggie's tireless hatred is also feeding into The Walking Dead's fatal flaw of being repetitive, something that the new slew of spin-offs was beginning to clean up. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon made the most obvious attempt at being fresh by moving to an entirely new, overseas location with an entirely new cast around the titular character. Dead City seemingly tried to achieve this too by introducing us to the jaw-dropping scenes of an overrun Manhattan, giving us skyscrapers and recognizable skylines again after years of hanging around post-apocalyptic communities, as well as the intriguing concept of walker-produced methane as an energy source. But the overwhelmingly familiar emotions radiating off Maggie started digging a little rut for the spin-off.

Even Hershel calls Maggie out for being obsessed with Negan, as he constantly feels overlooked by his own mother, where even Maggie gifting Hershel a cap in the Season 1 finale symbolizes how she currently views him as an extension of Glenn, emphasizing how she hasn't moved on. While it gives an intriguing twist to Hershel's arc in Season 2, it only hinders the storytelling in the rest of the show. Dead City is plagued with recycled dialogue and narrative beats of Maggie calling Negan irredeemable, making an emphatic display of not trusting him or viciously warning everyone she meets about how terrible of a person he is, despite what they may believe. The only silver lining to Maggie and Negan being separated this season is that, at least, I don't have to hear Negan justify his actions for the umpteenth time. As fascinating as the other elements of the show are, it is hard not to get bogged down by this plot point.

Maggie Needs To Move on in 'The Walking Dead: Dead City'

Apart from disrupting the flow and balance of the storytelling in Dead City, it is starting to become seriously detrimental to Maggie's characterization. Throughout Season 1, it became quite apparent that Maggie's personality traits were defined by her roles as a mother and a widow. The latter is fairly obvious in that she fiercely hates Negan, and even now, the Croat calls her by that label that she earned during Season 7 of the original show. While "The Widow" is used ominously to also hint at her fighting prowess, her identity is still very much wrapped up in Glenn's death.

Her status as a mother figure, however, provides a little bit of nuance. In Dead City, this was manifested in her single-minded goal to rescue Hershel, but it can also be translated into her leadership style. Just as she is fiercely protective of her son, she has always been a committed leader, particularly in the Season 2 premiere where she offers herself up for conscription to the New Babylon army to save the residents of Bricks from the same fate. While interesting, it still means Maggie generally oscillates between her two roles, one of which is purely defined by her past, leaving me begging for some sort of character development.

In The Walking Dead, she somewhat branched off from these one-note qualities when she left the main group to learn more about building communities, trading, architecture, and so much more with Georgie (Jayne Atkinson), the traveling knowledge-trader. Granted, Maggie was still running away from being around Negan, but at least she was simultaneously running toward something, until she took a giant leap back in this spin-off. I can only hope that Hershel's attempts at forcing Maggie to self-reflect will come to fruition, because, as one of my (and many others) favorite characters in the early seasons, I desperately need to enjoy watching her again.

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Dead City premiere on AMC+ on Sundays in the U.S.