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The Walking Dead: Is Pregnant Maggie Being A Bad Post-Apocalyptic Mom?

By Shelley Hazen
Published on: 04:03 PST, Mar 8, 2016

Tread carefully, spoilers ahead.

After The Walking Dead aired “No Tomorrow Yet” on Sunday, many fans and critics started wondering if the pregnant Maggie Greene is behaving in a rather un-motherly fashion.

And with some speculation that Mrs. Glenn Rhee may stand in for her husband and fall victim to Negan’s dread baseball bat, Negan, The Walking Dead may be heading towards its most horrific and abhorrent death. The show and the comics have killed pregnant women before.

In a brief recap, Maggie emerged in last week’s episode, “Knots Untie,” as a group leader as she negotiated a deal with the Hilltop Colony to take out the unseen Negan and his Saviors in exchange for food. On Sunday night, they did it, dispatching dozens of men in vicious fashion, with knives to the eyeballs and intense machine gun fire.

Trouble is just before this attack, Maggie and Glenn got a first glimpse of their new baby. Not long after, Maggie rolls up on the isolated compound acting as backup. This prompted Carol to wonder, and question Rick: What on Earth is Maggie doing here?

Many fans and critics have been wondering the same. On Talking Dead after “Knots Untie” aired, Walking Dead actress Lauren Cohen explained that her character negotiated this deal, and presumably was involved in its execution, to protect her unborn child.

Not everyone was convinced, including Carol, The Walking Dead‘s favorite killer housewife, who buried one daughter, watched another two die, and left a cookie on the grave of a fourth.

“I’m no Dr. Spock, but it seems like high on the list of rules for expectant mothers, right up there with not smoking cigarettes or eating cold cuts, would be this: Do not engage in armed raids on postapocalyptic pirate strongholds,” a New York Times critic wondered.

Glenn’s involvement makes a little more sense. The father-to-be committed his first kills since the first season of Walking Dead, but now he has so much at stake — a wife and a baby to protect, the Hollywood Reporter added. If he dies in the process, his wife and child will still be safe.

Maggie’s unwise decision was viewed through the lens of Carol’s experience. During a sweet conversation with Tobin, he stressed that her role as a mother was important and where she derived her strength, making her fierce and strong and protective of everyone in town.

Viewed that way, Maggie’s choice makes sense, but even Carol has trouble with it. Before The Walking Dead crew storms the Saviors’ stronghold, she criticizes her pregnant friend at the same time she’s dealing with that list of 18 people she’s killed, as Greg Nicotero explained.

“It’s something she’s struggling with and when she says to Maggie, ‘You’re supposed to be someone else,’ that’s a very intense Freudian slip. Carol is looking at Maggie like, ‘You have a baby coming; you’re supposed to be a mom and representing life moving forward; you’re not supposed to be out here. What’s a matter with you?!’ “

While the two are having this heart-to-heart, they are captured, and a teaser trailer for next week implies that things are not going to go well for either mom. Of course, there are no clear-cut decisions in the world of The Walking Dead.


Maggie did, after all, survive the Wolf attack while pregnant. Fighting back against the hoard of Walkers who stormed Alexandria was likely driven by her animal desire to protect her young. And sitting back in Alexandria this time, as her husband and the others committed the dirty work she arranged, may not have helped her situation anyway. She could starve in Alexandria just as easy as being killed by the Saviors. And we learned when Lori gave birth to Judith back at the prison, that labor is deadly in a world without hospitals.

And The Walking Dead may be building up to a vicious and sure-to-be traumatic murder of one of its favorite, strongest, and most important characters, Cinema Blend noted. The Walking Dead isn’t above killing pregnant women on the show or comics.

In the comics, Glenn is the one Negan murders with Lucille as a lesson to the others. On the show, the consequence of his involvement in the raid may mean that his wife and unborn child are brutally murdered instead. Add to this speculation about Cohen’s new short hairstyle and her recent comment that shooting The Walking Dead‘s season finale was the hardest day she’s ever had, and you have a horrifying recipe for a truly brutal death.

What do you think of The Walking Dead‘s decision to put Maggie in harm’s way? Do you think she’s being a bad mom by risking her life during the raid on the Saviors?

[Photo by AMC]

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