The Walking Dead Showrunner Breaks Down Maggie's Bloody Reaper Scene
After only one episode, "The Walking Dead" Season 11, Part 2 is making very clear that Maggie Rhee (Lauren Cohan) is far from the innocent farmer's daughter we met all the way back in Season 2. From the Season 7 murder of her husband, Glenn (Steven Yeun), to the multitude of troubles she has faced as a new community leader, Maggie has certainly been through some difficult times. All these years later, she has been transformed into a force not to be trifled with lightly.
In Season 11, Episode 9 ("No Other Way"), the community known as the Reapers learns this lesson the hard way. Though Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) negotiates an uneasy truce between the surviving members of the warring communities, it quickly becomes obvious that Maggie isn't comfortable simply accepting peace. After all of the previous bloodshed between the two groups, Maggie appears to become convinced that the only way to solve the problem is by spilling even more blood.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, "The Walking Dead" showrunner Angela Kang discussed the decision-making process behind Maggie's choice to take aim at the surviving Reapers.
Why did Maggie murder the Reapers?
In her interview with Entertainment Weekly, Kang explained that Daryl's deal with the Reapers didn't sit well with Maggie from the very beginning. Though Maggie initially accepts the peace with some level of reluctance, she makes a different decision when she sees Elijah (Okea Eme-Akwari) in pain and remembers the many people brutally killed by the Reapers. After only a second's thought, Maggie murders three of the four defenseless Reapers. But who exactly did Maggie do it for?
"She is doing it for Elijah, for herself, for the people that she has lost along the way," Kang said. "But I think she is also doing it for her own people in a lot of ways. A lot is weighing on her... And she just makes a split-second decision of: I think I have just got to wipe this threat out because, that is what needs to be done to right the scales."
Of course, Maggie has other thoughts contributing to this decision, including the words of a character that one might refer to as the devil on her shoulder. Only a few episodes prior, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) confides in Maggie that he wishes he had murdered all of them that night he introduced Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) and Glenn to Lucille. According to Kang, Negan's advice weighs particularly heavy on Maggie because of the military skills possessed by each Reaper.
"The other thing that is really echoing in her head is Negan talking to her... And she knows that her people rose up, and got back against him," Kang said. "And so there is just a lot that is going on in her head."
Notably, Maggie's murderous decision also leads Negan to rethink his current living situation.