'The Walking Dead' Season 11: Will Maggie be the new series lead? Daryl's days on show may be numbered
Lauren Cohan's return to 'The Walking Dead' is easily one of the biggest things on the minds of fans right now. And with recent comments from 'Walking Dead' Universe chief content officer Scott Gimple, it looks like Maggie Greene (Lauren Cohan) is going to have a much bigger role to play once she returns.
It's already been revealed that Maggie will make her return in the Season 10 finale and that she will basically be the cavalry, swooping in at the last minute to save our heroes. But Gimple has now revealed that once she does return, she will be a totally new person and her story will be a huge part of what drives the show forward in the future.
"She will return somewhat a new character, which is kind of cool, and all those things that affected and changed her are a story that we want to mine," Gimple told Comic Book. "And the dynamics that she left the story in are not the dynamics that she's coming back to and for her especially, it's like she took a year off of high school and she's coming back and everybody has changed."
Between Maggie's departure and return, six years have passed and things are extremely different. She's going to have a hard time adjusting to a lot of the changes, especially seeing Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) walking around as a free man despite murdering her husband.
"All the things have scrambled and there's Negan in a very different role," Gimple said. "And it's a reintroduction. She can't just pick up where she left off and she's carrying a story with her that, yeah, will expand things."
It looks like what happened to Maggie during her time away will be what runs the show come Season 11 and that suggests she might become the new series lead. But where does that leave Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus), the current lead character? The easiest thing to do would be to kill Daryl off in the upcoming finale, though that wouldn't sit too well with the fans. Alternatively, he could be given an exit like Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) so that he can be featured in some future project.
Ultimately, it does look like Daryl will have to leave the show to make space for Maggie and her inevitable growth into the leader of the survivors. How they choose to do that is something we'll have to watch and see.
'The Walking Dead' Season 10 finale 'A Certain Doom' is scheduled to air on AMC on October 4.