The Walking Dead: Dead City Timeline Proves A Lot Has Changed For Negan & Maggie

Negan and Maggie’s The Walking Dead spinoff is finally here, arriving on AMC seven months after the flagship series took its final bow. However, the in-universe time that’s elapsed between series is actually much longer. So when does The Walking Dead: Dead City take place, exactly?

AMC didn’t provide an official timeline while promoting Dead City, simply setting Negan and Maggie’s quest in a “post-apocalyptic Manhattan, long ago cut off from the mainland” and in a “crumbling” state. That doesn’t narrow things down too much: more than a decade into the apocalypse, most places are crumbling. However, the series trailer provided a more concrete clue. Maggie’s son Hershel — whom Negan and Maggie are trying to rescue in Dead City — is now a young teenager played by Logan Kim, recast from the original show’s Kien Michael Spiller.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays Negan, also told Deadline that the series takes place “a couple of years after” the events of The Walking Dead series finale. “And here’s the problem with those couple of years — we don’t see what happens to these characters,” he explained. “Negan has an opportunity to fall into his old ways in these missing years. He is very much a creature of habit, and he knows how to survive.”

But why did Negan fall into those old ways? The last time viewers checked in with Negan and Maggie’s relationship, they seemed to be on fairly good terms — as good as possible between a widow and her husband’s murderer, of course. Though Maggie decided that she could never forgive Negan for killing Glenn, she said Negan and Annie were welcome to stay in the community. “You have earned your place,” she said in the series finale.

But as Morgan recently told Entertainment Weekly, “He’s not with his family [in Dead City], so some sh*t has happened.”

Maggie, similarly, does not seem to be any closer to forgiving Negan. In fact, Lauren Cohan told EW, Maggie “is definitely in many ways gone a couple steps back by the time we see her, because you hope to avoid something and get on with your life, and I just don’t think you can move forward without facing it.”

In an interview with TV Insider, the Dead City stars said it will be a while for the pair to be pals — if ever. “I think there may be some shared purpose or mutual benefit, but I don’t think ... even by the end, there’s a, you know, friendship.”

“I think there’s some understanding that happens. I wouldn’t say that they’re ever gonna be friendly,” Morgan added. “I think we’re three seasons away from that.”