It was confirmed last year that Maggie would be returning to The Walking Dead for season 11, but whether she would make any appearances prior to then was kept deliberately vague. Thanks to a sneak peek, however, it’s now official that she’ll be back for the finale.
Maggie last appeared in season 9 episode “What Comes After,” which saw the departure of Rick, with “Stradivarius” explaining that towards the end of the six-year time skip she had left Hilltop with the mysterious Georgie to help build another community. And now, the show will finally address how she’s been spending her time since we last saw her.
The character was temporarily written out when Lauren Cohan was cast as one of the leads in light-hearted espionage thriller Whiskey Cavalier, only for it to sadly go the way of many promising new series and be cancelled after a single season. There was also the issue of a pay dispute, as season 9 saw the end of her contract as a series regular and she requested a salary bump to put her closer to that of her similarly long-surviving (male) co-stars Andrew Lincoln and Norman Reedus.
Speaking about the character’s upcoming return, here’s what showrunner Angela Kang had to say:
“People who watched the sneak previews will see that Maggie is back, and that’s going to be part of the story,” Kang explained, going on to offer a bit more insight for Episode 10×16. “Carol feels like she’s got a lot to make up for. She’ll be stepping up. We obviously have Daryl in a position of leadership. And Beta, and Negan, there’s a lot of people with a lot of beef against each other, so that’s all going to come to a head, too.”
“There’s not much I can say without being spoiler-y,” Kang continued. “But Maggie is part of the heart of these people’s lives. There’s so much love for her within our communities, and she was a leader at a time when so much of the leadership at Hilltop had been lost. Even as we’re working on Season 11, we’ve got so much great stuff planned for her. So I’m just excited for her to be back in the family and for us to do more great stuff with Maggie.”
The sneak peek in question sees her find a letter from Carol asking for her return, filling her in on the danger of the Whisperers and the people already lost to their attacks. However, it’ll be some time before we get to see her again, as the air date of the final episode has been indefinitely postponed due to the coronavirus delaying post-production, the required effects work being far more complicated for the VFX artists to complete remotely.
Maggie’s uncompromising nature has been one of the few consistencies of The Walking Dead even at its low points, and her (presumably permanent) return will be more than welcome in this time of crisis for our ensemble of survivors. And as the final battle against Beta, the Whisperers and their undead horde begins, the return of a long-standing character after a notable absence will likely come about in a suitably dramatic and heroic manner.