The Walking Dead‘s Season 6 finale went to great lengths to pull off that cliffhanger ending, right when the audience and characters were about to learn who Negan killed with his baseball bat. This led to months of theorizing before the show went ahead and followed the comics by putting a final end to Glenn as he told (pregnant) Maggie that he’d come find her after death. Maggie, of course, was irreparably devastated, and Negan had already told her, “Jesus, you look sh*tty. I should just put you out of your misery right now.”
As it turns out, Negan did kind-of kill Maggie. They filmed such an outcome as part of several alternate versions of the scene, which had left the entire cast and crew understandably exhausted. Maggie Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who are prepping for this weekend’s The Walking Dead: Dead City premiere, spoke with Emmy magazine to detail how the production worked overtime to shoot so many endings that no one could spoil the real deal before the Season 7 premiere reveal. “There was a point where you had to kill me,” Cohan reminded Morgan, who agreed that this was a grueling ordeal for all:
“I was kind of sick of hitting people,” Morgan says. “And I felt bad for the other actors because it takes an emotional toll. Everyone was all cried and snotted out. And you’d think, ‘But no one will ever see this.’ It’s just in case someone was flying a drone overhead.”
Those pesky drones, man. Really, though, the production had little choice but to pull out some extra stops in the name of secrecy. What made Glenn’s death hit even harder, though, is that Negan killed Abraham first, and everyone thought that would be it, but then he decided, what the hell, let’s do another. That whammy caused plenty of viewers to complain and claim they were done with the show, which lasted another four full seasons and will soon spawn a wealth of spinoffs, including the Negan and Maggie not-buddy-comedy show.
The Walking Dead: Dead City premieres on June 18.
(Via The Emmys)