Lauren Cohan Dishes On That Major Death In TWD Season 11 Episode 2
Contains spoilers for "The Walking Dead" Season 11, Episodes 1 and 2
In the "Walking Dead" Season 11 premiere, "Acheron: Part I," a group that includes Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Daryl (Norman Reedus), Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam), and Gage (Jackson Pace), among others, attempts to traverse a subway tunnel in order to reach Maggie's former Meridian community, where they suspect they can secure supplies to aid their continued survival. Mid-mission, Gage and Roy (C. Thomas Howell) steal a cache of supplies from the group and secretly set off on their own. Then, in the episode's climax, the group is attacked by a pack of walkers (zombies in "TWD" parlance). Most of the group is able to escape by climbing onto an adjacent train car, but Maggie slips and falls on her way up.
She reunites with the rest of the party in the next episode, "Acheron: Part 2," after finding a trap door connecting to an enclosed train car in which the group is able to find temporary safety. Gage shows up shortly after that, asking Maggie and company to let him into their makeshift safe room. However, Maggie decides their endangerment by a pack of walkers pursuing him isn't worth risking, so she leaves him to die.
In an interview with Syfy Wire published in the wake of the Season 11, Episode 2 premiere on AMC, Cohan opened up about how Maggie felt about her role in Gage's death and how that individual action ties into her larger character arc.
Maggie is just trying to survive
Lauren Cohan began her interview with Syfy writer Tara Bennett by discussing how, given the warlike conditions of a zombie apocalypse, Maggie is functionally similar to a soldier in wartime. "What I noticed and excited me the most is that she's doing so many things that you see male soldiers have to do, or men have to do, that I'm not as accustomed to seeing women on screen do," she said.
That led to a discussion of Maggie's complicity in Gage's death. "Of course, it hurts like when she lets Gage be killed by the zombies on the other side of the subway car door," she said. "But her brain is playing this tape through and saying, 'I'm sorry, but this is the greater loss and the lesser loss. We have to take this road. And that's what it is.'"
Cohan went on to compare Maggie's accumulated traumas to dents sustained by a car from a series of accidents. She then expressed hope that Maggie might end up okay despite the darkness that often defines her. "So, how do we push to get these dents back out of the car, so that we have a full person again, who is able to let the subtler things exist, and let the subtler feelings come back and flourish," asked Cohan. "During the course of this final season," she continued, "I hope to push the darkness away."
Maggie's fate will be revealed in the lead-up to "The Walking Dead" series finale, which will air during 2022 on a date that has yet to be announced.