A little while ago I found myself musing that The Walking Dead was probably going to announce a Negan spin-off some time soon, given their love for both the character and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the actor. Little did I know that literally hours later, AMC would announced Isle of the Dead, a spin-off starring both Negan and Maggie, set in a zombie-infected Manhattan.
But I wasn’t the only one surprised. So was Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who is confused about the reveal, given that it kind of spoils his fate in season 11 of the show.
Speaking on the Rich Eisen show, here’s what Morgan had to say about the reveal:
“I guess we don’t need to die. Spoiler Alert, folks. Sorry! I’m still not sure why we announced that already. It was sort of a shocker to me.”
I understand his confusion, given that Negan’s fate is currently unknown on the show and an open question was whether or not he would survive the finale, or if Maggie would finally get her justice on him. The reveal of the spin-off with Maggie clearly answers that question early.
The news of the spin-off has many fans upset that they would pair Negan and Maggie together, but again, I don’t believe they are “shipping” the two, making Maggie end up with the man who brutally murdered her husband, and I imagine it’s going to be sort of a “they’re forced to work together to survive” kind of thing. There have started to be some spoilers circulating around the TWD finale and the concept for the spin-off, but I won’t go into those here just yet in this article. But they help explain what’s going on here.
I suppose it can make some amount of sense that they announced the spin-off, given that AMC previously also announced the Daryl and Carol spin-off way ahead of time, making it clear neither of those characters would die. This is especially relevant given that Daryl has more or less taken over Rick’s role in the Commonwealth storyline, a role that had Rick dead by the end, which clearly will not happen to Daryl if that show is still happening.
But we’re so close to the finale, it probably would have been an option to just save the Negan and Maggie news for the finale, given that now we’re all just waiting to see what weird plot turn forces the two to go to Manhattan. It would have been like announcing the Rick Grimes spin-off movies before his last episode, and in that case, they at least waited until it aired and it was confirmed he survived in order to reveal that plan. So I get what Jeffrey Dean Morgan is saying. However, given the world of leaks surrounding TWD, it’s almost certain that with production and filming spooling up on Isle of the Dead, that the news probably would have leaked out ahead of time, so maybe best to get out ahead of it, no matter the implications for the finale, just to be the official source of the news.
I am probably more curious about the Negan and Maggie spin-off than I am the Carol and Daryl one, but we’ll see. There’s also Tales of the The Walking Dead, an anthology series that has cast actors like Terry Crews and Olivia Munn in what should be short, standalone stories. Plus Fear the Walking Dead is still going, so that’s four Walking Dead series on AMC even with the main show ended. Plus those alleged Rick Grimes movies still coming. Zombies forever.
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