Dead City’ Star Lauren Cohan on the Shocking Season 2 Finale and What She’d Like to See Next

[Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for Season 2 of The Walking Dead: Dead City.]

Throughout Season 2 of The Walking Dead: Dead City, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) has been at war with herself and her own emotions when it came to how to handle things, most significantly in dealing with Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who she has very complicated feelings about, and what to do about her teenage son Hershel (Logan Kim), who clearly has secrets of his own. By throwing in The Dama (Lisa Emery), The Croat (Željko Ivanek), the New Babylon Federation, and Bruegel (Kim Coates), alliances continued to shift and survival always teetered between loyalty to others and keeping yourself alive.

Collider got the opportunity to chat one-on-one with Cohan about what it meant to put her mark on The Walking Dead Universe as the director of a Dead City episode this season, the symbolism of the bear in that episode, and how it inspired her to want to direct again. She also discussed Maggie finally getting to have a moment to confront The Dama, literally stabbing Negan in the back even though it doesn’t ultimately end him, whether she’s ride or die with Maggie or if she sees an endpoint coming for the character, what she’d like to see come next for Maggie and Negan, whether Maggie can keep Hershel from going full villain, and the reunion she’d like to see happen.

Directing an Episode in Season 2 of ‘Dead City’ Made Lauren Cohan Think of the Series a Little Differently

“It was a really interesting experience.”

Collider: How did you find the experience of actually just taking on an episode of The Walking Dead? When you’re a part of a world, for as long as you’ve been a part of that world, and you’ve played the character for such a long time, to the point that you know her better than anybody, what does it feel like to actually put your mark on it in that way?

LAUREN COHAN: It’s a great question. The more I could go in and interrogate and question everything, the more it helped me in the episode. The tone of this show is different to the tone of the original series, so sometimes you change the doorway that you’re looking in on things from. It gives me a chance to be like, “Well, if we’re telling a story in this town, what are the little character quirks for anybody,” even if it’s for Negan or for anybody that might come up that we were not used to and that we get to play with. It was very level setting. As I read the script for everybody, in preparation to direct it, it just challenges your brain to think of it a little differently. I think that was one of the big challenges. Despite playing Maggie in it, it was way more the family of the episode itself and all the characters in the family suddenly were one behemoth person for me to pay attention to. It was a really interesting experience.

In terms of the bear, you’ve previously mentioned that you had considered other possible animals. What other animals did you consider for that? Is there anything that’s as threatening and scary as a bear?

COHAN: No. And I was so over the moon about how the bear turned out in the show because there were layers upon layers of us developing the bear until we got to what everybody saw [in the episode]. I watched the episode again, having had two months since I had last seen it, and I was like, “Damn, this bear looks real.” I was so proud of and impressed with the team. We toyed with a mountain lion or a pack of wolves. I can’t remember how the writers settled on a bear. There was some twist in the plot of the writers’ room where that was the animal that we landed on. I think it was just about it being the fiercest thing.

I know that when they wrote the script, the bear was a symbol of Hershel and the beast within, but then I think there was an additional layer of the protective mother bear. You don’t know if the bear is male or female in the show, obviously. I’m not going to insult the bear by saying we humanized it, but the more we humanized her potential motivations, the more it informed things. We obviously wanted it to be terrifying in the show, but the story that you tell of the destruction and the things she’s been through, any animals fighting for survival or protecting their own, it’s not so dissimilar to Maggie and Negan and Hershel and everybody in the show.

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“That’s the big conflict.”

Did you have an immediate sense of wanting to direct again?

COHAN: Yeah, as soon as I finished, I immediately thought, “I definitely want to do this again, just not right away.” We still had two episodes left to film, so it was hard to conceive of. I’m sure that’s how people feel after childbirth. To me, creatively, it was like cracking the sky open and you’re like, “Oh, there’s a whole universe outside our planet.” I felt more cognizant of everything I wanted to be better and get better at and learn. I definitely felt appreciative of and satisfied by the experience in many ways. It was just so full and such a huge, gratifying and challenging bond that we all got out of it. As soon as you start doing it, you’re like, “Okay, cool,” and you start putting these little bookmarks in the pages of your brain to pay attention to this, learn this, and seek out this help.

And then, after that, how I read is different, how I watch things is different, and how I interact when I’m back in actor mode is different. It cuts you open in all these different ways. The longer any of us pursue our field, the more we fortify. I watched Lilo and Stitch the other day, and when Stitch goes in the water, he becomes heavier because the water increases his density and his weight. That’s like learning. You walk through these experiences and you become more solid and more heavy in these good ways by your exposure to an element. You don’t look at what you learned. You look at how much more you want to learn.

Lauren Cohan Had Fun With That Anticipated Face Off With The Dama in ‘Dead City’

“Hershel has drunk the Kool-Aid and is all in with the world of this woman.”

What was it like to shoot the moment with Maggie tied up, unable to go anywhere except to have this chat with The Dama? How was it to have all of that come to a head, especially with everything she knows by that point?

COHAN: Hershel has drunk the Kool-Aid and is all in with the world of this woman. It was so heartbreaking, to realize that and to see the manipulative power The Dama has while being tied up. I have to be honest, shooting that scene was so frustrating. I was tied up with all these copper bands and it took so long to get it on in a way that looked very secure that it was easier just to make it inescapable. Between setups, I was like, “Don’t undo it. Just leave me here.” Time is always of the essence when you’re filming. Having your hands tied and sitting on the floor and being beaten up, through the experience, you just really feel beaten up and handcuffed. It was crazy. And also, working with Lisa [Emery] and her making Maggie relive all these experiences and making her break was really fun to do. It was really fun to work with Lisa, too, because I hadn’t gotten to yet. But those were challenging days.

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The ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ actor also tells Collider what Hershel would most want to ask his father, Glenn.

In that moment when Negan is going to kill Gaius Charles’ character with the bat and Maggie literally stabs him in the back, and then picks up Lucille for herself, what was it like to carry the bat around? Did Jeffrey Dean Morgan get very protective of it and of passing it off to you?

COHAN: Did he give the bat blessing or me instruction, or anything like that? Yeah. Nobody gets to touch Negan’s bat. The whole sequence was so charged because that stabbing was scripted as Maggie having an ecstatic release at the moment of stabbing him. What was true about it for me was that, in theory, she must have gone through what it would be like, hundreds of times, to really go through with it. The tension release of it finally happening was such a huge moment. Will this take the pain away? Will this solve this problem? Will this be the end to all of the misunderstanding and the difficulty that I have with my son, that I have with myself, and that seems to be in this world? There was a moment of bliss that was quite short-lived. That whole thing was cool. It was great to have talked about it and thought about it for so long, and then to actually act on it was like, “Okay, we’re doing this.” It was an echo to when Rick takes Negan out, and then saves him. Maggie takes him out, but it’s not the end.

‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’ Star Lauren Cohan Would Like to See a Big Reunion Happen At Some Point

“It would blow people’s minds.”

Jeffrey Dean Morgan has said that he’s maybe getting closer to his time as Negan being done. Have you thought about how much longer you might want to play this character in this world? Are you ride or die with Maggie?

COHAN: We’ve talked about taking these characters to somewhere where we eventually do all get back together again and there’s some intersection of the super group. I think it would blow people’s minds. It would blow our minds. It would be the ultimate reunion and the ultimate finish. In terms of how long we spend on our story in Dead City, even things we talk about that could happen in another season, it’s such a new take and a new direction that, as long as those things get to keep happening, then the story is not done. There’s a big light coming for Maggie, that we have in this long-term arc that’s planned for her. So, I definitely want to stay until the light comes.

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While on Ladies Night, Cohan revisits her journey from auditioning for Maggie to making her directorial debut in ‘Dead City.’

After you literally stab somebody in the back and she also has so much to deal with, when it comes to her son, it feels like there’s some serious group therapy that needs to happen. What do you want to see, as far as the next steps for these characters? It feels like you didn’t really get to spend much time with Maggie and Negan together this season, so do you want to see more of that in a possible Season 3? What would you like to see happen next?

COHAN: That’s what I want to see next. I don’t want to call it a truce, but they have basically beaten each other into submission, so I’d like to see some sort of agreement where, if it’s not to the death, then there is something livable here. That then allows for the show, because they’ve made this decision and they’ve gone to the absolute limit of what you can do in this dynamic, to just shatter open and everything that we’ve expected and everything that these characters can expect of themselves or of others can be turned on its head. That is what I would like to see. That’s what I hope to do next.

Lauren Cohan Hopes Maggie Can Keep Herschel from Going Full Villain in ‘Dead City’

“No matter how loving or willing you are as a parent, there will always be potential for interception.”

Do you think Maggie can keep Hershel from becoming a villain and tipping over that edge?

COHAN: I hope so. What I liked about that storyline is that it’s a symbol for the influences that can befall young people. No matter how loving or willing you are as a parent, there will always be potential for interception. That is really scary and really sad. It’s a learning experience for both Maggie and Hershel. Hershel has a lot more runway because he’s still so young. It’s a learning experience for Maggie, because over these last few seasons and over these years, you see the vision tunneling because of trauma and because of fear of losing the last person she has left. What we got to this season was the beginning of that hope coming back in. Whatever this survival method is that’s been harnessed, it’s just not going to work anymore. Reaching breaking points like that is always, ultimately, the beginning of a new story and that, to me, is very uplifting despite all the other horrible things.

The Walking Dead: Dead City is available to stream on AMC+. Check out the Season 2 trailer: