Jeffrey Dean Morgan Teases Negan & Maggie’s Relationship in Walking Dead: Dead City

The Walking Dead: Dead City sees the very unlikely alliance between anti-hero Negan and once-sworn enemy Maggie putting the pair on a mission to New York. While they are working together for a specific cause, star Jeffrey Dean Morgan has teased that fans shouldn’t expect their strained relationship to become any closer than is strictly necessary.

Since the arrival of Negan in The Walking Dead, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) was given plenty of reasons to hate him, not least his brutal killing of her her partner and the father of her child, Glenn. Over the several seasons that followed that fateful episode, Maggie made it her mission to want Negan dead, and in the most part the baseball bat-wielding villain reciprocated the sentiment. However, as the main show came to an end, the pair came to a compromising understanding, and their relationship will now be explored further in the first new Walking Dead spin-off show. When discussing what fans can expect from the new series, Morgan told ET:

“They’re not getting married, you know what I mean? I’ll give that away. It’s tenuous at best. They’re needing each other for a very specific reason. So, Negan has gone back probably a few steps in that redemption arc out of necessity and his survival instincts. It’s going to be a rough road, but going down 5th Avenue is not that bad a road to go down.”

Related: The Walking Dead: Dead City Teases Maggie and Negan Teaming Up in New Images

The Walking Dead Will Be On Screens For Some Time To Come

The Walking Dead has been one of the AMC’s biggest properties for over a decade, and when the announcement was made that the show would be coming to an end it seemed like the zombie story was ready to shamble off into the apocalyptic sunset. However, before the series finale aired the future of the franchise had already been announced, with three new spin-off shows being developed and more in contention.

Dead City will arrive this summer, and with it comes on the of most popular characters from the main series in Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan. Everyone loves a bad guy, and when he made his debut in the show there were none badder that the man with the barbed-wire bat named Lucille. While time may have mellowed Negan a little, his popularity as one of the franchise’s best characters has not waned.

Giving Negan his own show seems like a no brainier, and buddying him up with his nemesis Maggie only promises to make their journey a one that comes with as much danger from within as it does from without. It is clear from the trailers and promotions for the spin-off that Maggie needs Negan to help her save her son, but that doesn’t mean she is going to warm to him and there is always going to be that thread of doubt running through everything that do that forces them to rely on each other.

The Walking Dead: Dead City will premiere on AMC in June.