While fans will still have to wait another 8 months or so until The Walking Dead kicks off its eleventh and final season on AMC, the cast and crew put together another six-episode stretch to tide everyone over, since we've only seen one new episode since last April. For everyone looking to get an intriguing sneak peek at the remaining Season 10 episodes, we've got a look at the opening minutes of Episode 1017, "Home Sweet Home," in which Lauren Cohan's Maggie comes face to face with an old demon in the form of Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Negan for the first time since she vacated in Season 9.
Check out The Walking Dead video below, which features far less eye-gouging and crotch-kicking than Walking Dead fans might have expected if Maggie crossed paths with Negan a lot sooner.
Let's dig into these opening minutes chronologically. We start off with Maggie showing off her zombie-killing badassery, which was awesome and arguably necessarily, since her return in Episode 1016 didn't give her enough time to shine in that department. (The same goes for her masked friend.) It's not like we see that much in this opening, but it counts for something. I mean, she knifed a walker's head to a horizontal tree branch while it was still standing. And she likely pictured Negan's head while she was doing it.
The new episode, which debuts on the AMC+ service a week ahead of its linear TV premiere on AMC proper, quickly gives fans another bit that was missing from Maggie's first episode back: a meaningful conversation between Maggie and Judith. And immediately, both Michonne and Rick were brought up, though not by name. (She was clearly talking about her emotional parents and not her biological ones.) Can't hate on the characters feeling good vibes by thinking about sleeping under the same sky as other people they love dearly.
Of course, it also means they're sleeping under the same stars as people they want nothing to do with. And while Judith bonded with Negan during his time locked up in Alexandria, Maggie is understandably still feeling the wounds that he gave her by bashing in Glenn's head. As great as it would be if Maggie and Steven Yeun's Glenn would reconnect in the in-development anthology series, that still wouldn't allow Negan to get away with that heinous act. The only way to balance things completely would be if Maggie could go back in time and kill Lucille, which is technically possible via fantasy sequence in the Season 10 finale, since Hilarie Burton Morgan will show up as Lucille in that episode.
So it's almost surprising that Maggie locked eyeballs with Negan for as long as she did without doing anything violent. Sure, she might not have wanted to do anything unjust in front of Judith, but there was also something else in Maggie that wasn't there in years prior. She's a more grounded character now, and has a bit of distance from that irredeemable act. But that doesn't mean she will take his freedom lightly. One can imagine the minutes after this opening will feature her hollering at anyone who will listen about why he still needs to be locked up. But will she convince anyone that her words hold merit? We'll just have to watch and see.
The Walking Dead will return to audiences with the final six episodes of Season 10 when "Home Sweet Home" debuts on AMC+ on Sunday, February 21, and on AMC proper on Sunday, February 28.
