It looks like AMC may have played us again. When Andrew Lincoln was revealed to be leaving The Walking Dead early on in season 9, we thought that would be the last we’d see of Rick Grimes. However, following his exit, it was announced that he was moving on to star in a trilogy of TV movies instead. In the very same episode, Lauren Cohan made her final appearance as Maggie Rhee, too. But now it turns out that she might get her own spinoff as well.
While speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Cohan revealed that a series centering around Maggie’s efforts to start a new community – the reason for her leaving Hilltop, as briefly explained on the show – is in the earliest stages of development over at AMC. It’s not a project that’s hurtling towards our screens just yet, though, so TWD fans shouldn’t get too excited.
“There may have been some conversations but everything is so early days ambiguous. Me, as much as anybody, we’ll have to see what happens,” said the actress.
This is surprising news, as it’s generally assumed that Cohan had a falling out with the folks at AMC after the months-long contract negotiations that eventually broke down, leading her to leave the series and join ABC’s comedy-drama Whiskey Cavalier instead. The actress opened up to THR about her split with the network though and explained that there wasn’t any bad blood at all.
“I don’t even think that it was bad. It was like, I’ve done the show for a long time. It was a long time to be in any character and sometimes you just get quiet and listen to your inner-guidance and it’s time to multitask.”
We were previously led to believe that Maggie could reappear for the odd episode in season 10, as per comments from showrunner Angela Kang, but a series about her new mission to create a better community elsewhere would be great. Especially as fans have deduced that the community Maggie’s helping build must be the Commonwealth, a huge hub of 50,000 survivors from the comics.
From the sounds of things, this Maggie spinoff isn’t as much of a done deal as Lincoln’s movies, but it sure sounds like the network’s interested and with any luck, Cohan will return to the world of The Walking Dead in the not too distant future.