Jeffrey Dean Morgan And Lauren Cohan Launching An Even Darker Walking Dead Spinoff Series
Negan and Maggie together again! What could go wrong?
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On The Walking Dead, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan’s characters have some solid reasons to not like each other very much. Negan (Morgan), in an obscure and rarely referenced example (this is sarcasm), brutally beat Maggie’s (Cohan) husband to death. Even more recently, Negan left Maggie to die in the final season’s premiere episode, though the latter thankfully survived. Regardless of how they feel about one another, the two will apparently be continuing their adventures together at least for a little while. After the conclusion of The Walking Dead, the pair will co-star in the upcoming Isle of the Dead.
According to Deadline, the 6-episode Isle of the Dead will be a mini-series set in a corner of the post-apocalyptic world we haven’t seen yet — the island of Manhattan. Cut off from the mainland and the reach of any of the various groups in the show trying to restore order, the Manhattan that Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan will experience is one in which the restless dead and the most brutal survivors reign supreme. Dan McDermott, President of Entertainment and AMC Studios for AMC Networks, promises that the “iconic skyline… takes on a very different meaning when viewed through the lens of a zombie apocalypse.”
Isle of the Dead will be showrun by Eli Jorné, who has produced and written for multiple AMC series include The Walking Dead. In spite of all the brutality and darkness Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan’s characters have already experienced on the original series, Scott M. Gimple — chief content officer for The Walking Dead‘s growing universe — says that Jorné has constructed a “chaotic, beautiful, grimy madhouse of the dead” that will be nothing like Negan, Maggie, or the fans have seen before. He goes on to call Isle of the Dead‘s transformed Manhattan “insane” and promises an “epic for the ages” that will push Negan and Maggie “to their limits with the world — and each other.”
As the producers point out, Jeffrey Dean Moran and Lauren Cohan will be the first characters in the show we’ll be seeing making it to The Walking Dead‘s version of New York City in the franchise. Before now, the closest we’ve been was Ithaca, New York in season 1 of The Walking Dead: World Beyond. For those keeping score, Ithaca is still a good 230 miles from NYC, or a 4 hour drive here in pre-zombie America.
Last September after an awkward, extended silence between Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan’s characters in the episode “Out of the Ashes,” fans found themselves — some hopefully and some with disgust — wondering if The Walking Dead was hinting at a future romance between the characters. The resulting shipping was no doubt helped by the pair starring together as one of the most famous married couples in pop culture — Thomas and Martha Wayne — in 2016’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Showrunner Angela Kang, however, assured Insider that there was no “romantic intent” in the scene.
But now, the fact that Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan will be enjoying their own mini-series spin-off together could renew the speculation. Considering that Negan’s murder of Maggie’s husband Glenn (Steven Yeun) caused an exodus of fans from the series, it would seem a bad idea to have his widow making time with his murderer. We’ll know more when Isle of the Dead premieres on AMC some time next year.
