The Walking Dead: Dead City is an apocalyptic drama and Spinoff of parent show The Walking Dead (2010), revolving around Maggie Rhee and Negan Smith teaming up to rescue Hershel Rhee from nefarious forces in New York City. The show is the fifth installment in The Walking Dead Television Universe, and has run on AMC since 2023.
Unmarked spoilers are present throughout the subpages as well as some of the synopses below, with the exception of tropes about future episodes. Read at your own risk.
Tropes are not to be added to pages until the episode has aired on AMC.
When the Fall took place, Negan Smith lost his wife Lucille to cancer several months in. The despair from her demise broke Negan and unleashed his dark side, and he soon put it to good use violently taking command of a power base and forming a large group called the Saviors. Tormenting other survivors into providing for him under the pretense of making them strong, Negan made a dreaded name for himself in the Virginia region.
Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Atlanta, Rick Grimes’s group of survivors settled into Hershel Greene’s farm. Hershel’s eldest daughter Maggie met and fell in love with Glenn Rhee, and they eventually married and were expecting a child by the time they arrived at the Alexandria Safe-Zone in Virginia.
Fate forever intertwined Maggie and Negan on the terrible night that Negan captured most of Rick’s group and forced them to kneel before him. Negan slaughtered Abraham Ford and soon after Glenn to torment the group into submission. Now left to raise her and Glenn’s child alone, Maggie took leadership of Hilltop Colony and led it into war against Negan alongside Alexandria and the Kingdom. To her dismay, Rick and Michonne Hawthorne spared Negan after defeating him and sentenced him to life in prison.
Maggie gave birth to her son who she named Hershel after her late father and refused to accept Negan’s life being spared. Eighteen months later, Maggie led a conspiracy to kill Negan behind Rick and Michonne’s back, only to discover Negan had been broken by his incarceration, satisfying her. In the aftermath, Maggie left the Coalition to settle out west with Hershel. After several years, Maggie returned to Hilltop only to find Negan now an uneasy ally of the Coalition, having helped defeat the Whisperers in her absence.
Maggie and Negan were forced to work together against the threat of the Reapers, but Negan recognized Maggie would likely never forgive him and left of his own volition. He joined another community and quickly married a woman named Annie, and they were soon expecting a child. Their group was forced to team up with the Coalition against the Commonwealth’s corrupt leaders, and the crisis saw Negan finally realize the horrors he put Maggie through the night he killed Glenn. The two made a tentative peace; Maggie admitted she’d never truly forgive him, but acknowledged he was trying to do better and would accept him for it.
Nonetheless, Negan and Annie left the Coalition, while Maggie looked forward to the future. Little do they know that fate is about to bring them together again…
Season 1
Maggie Rhee is forced to do the unthinkable when her son Hershel is kidnapped - she must recruit his father’s murderer, Negan Smith, to find him in New York City.
- "Old Acquaintances"
- "Who's There?"
- "People Are a Resource"
- "Everybody Wins a Prize"
- "Stories We Tell Ourselves"
- "Doma Smo"
