The Walking Dead: Maggie Rhee finally returns home to Alexandria only to face former nemesis Negan

Maggie Rhee finally returned to Alexandria on Sunday’s episode of The Walking Dead.

After spending years away from the show’s core group of survivors, its gutsy heroine [Lauren Cohan] decided it was time for a long-overdue reunion.

She helped the gang defeat their arch-nemeses The Whisperers, and desperately wanted to find a more permanent home for her son Hershel Jr. [Kien Michael Spiller].

But before she could get comfortable, she had a host of new challenges to deal with, not least the fact that Negan, the man who killed her husband, was living there, too.

She’d also been marked for death by a mysterious character called The Pope, who seemed to be aligned with a terrifying new group called The Reapers.

Despite all that, when Daryl Dixon [Norman Reedus] asked if she was ‘coming home’ after years away, Maggie agreed that it was time.

‘Those people deserve one,’ she replied, referring to her associates. ‘So does Hershel. I’ll deal with Negan if I have to. Right now, the only thing that matters is Alexandria.’

The episode titled Home Sweet Home, was the first of six that were added to season 10 after pre-production on season 11 was halted by the coronavirus pandemic.

As the episode opened, Maggie was seen walking along in the forest with Judith Grimes [Cailey Fleming], the daughter of her old friend Rick.

The two of them caught up and spoke about those they’d lost, sure that they were out there somewhere, all looking at the same stars.

Deep in conversation, they stumbled across Kelly [Angel Theory] and other survivors packing up a wagon bound for Alexandria, absently smiling at them.

When the wagon pulled away, Maggie saw Negan [Jeffrey Dean Morgan] standing behind it.

The sight of the former Saviors leader, who had slaughtered her husband Glenn Rhee [Steven Yeun] with a wire-wrapped baseball bat, shocked her.

‘Hey Maggie,’ Negan said, as Maggie stared. ‘I didn’t escape, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

Maggie seethed with rage as she faced him, then wordlessly stomped away.

‘Well, s***,’ Negan said.

That afternoon, Maggie met up with Daryl and Carol Pelletier [Melissa McBride] in the woods, still stewing over what had happened with Negan.

She introduced them to her friends Elijah [Okea Eme-Akwari] and Cole [James Devoti], who had given her a home with their group until their village was destroyed.

Maggie had thought everyone would move to Hilltop next, but Daryl showed her that the settlement was decimated by the Whisperers.

‘Maggie, Negan was with the Whisperers that night,’ Carol confessed. ‘Alpha needed to die, and Negan was our best chance. We were going to lose everything. Negan’s the reason we didn’t.’

‘So we’re all gonna go to Alexandria and live next to the guy that torched this place?’ Cole asked, disbelieving. ‘Same guy who killed her husband?’

‘We’re still figuring things out,’ Daryl returned.

He headed out with Maggie and her friends to find their group and bring them along.

They were joined by Kelly, who was still looking for her missing sister Connie [Lauren Ridloff], last seen after a cave collapse.

As they journeyed, the group sought shelter for the night and battled zombies to secure it.

Daryl asked Maggie afterward where she’d been for so long, and why she stayed away.

‘Well, you know, Georgie had all these good ideas,’ Maggie said, referring to the mysterious woman with whom she’d disappeared in Season 8. ‘With things going so well at Hilltop, the idea of doing that for others felt good. So we’d find groups and do what we could. But it’d always go sideways.’

Maggie admitted she didn’t know what had happened to Georgie after that, saying she only knew the woman had gone off to check on ‘a city out West.’

As for what happened to her village after it was invaded, Maggie wasn’t ready to discuss it.

Instead, she told Daryl that she and Hershel had once visited an old place her Nana had by the water, where the two of them bonded and she told him stories about family.

‘He asked how his daddy died,’ Maggie remembered. ‘I knew he would. I knew it was coming.’

She paused, and swallowed hard. ‘I told him that a bad man killed him. He wanted to know if that man got what he deserved. He wanted to know if that man was dead.’

‘Truth is,’ Maggie said slowly, looking at Daryl, ‘I left home ’cause I couldn’t have Negan take up any more space in my head. And then I realized that I didn’t want to bring Hershel back to that. And the next morning, we met this whole community of people who needed us as much as we needed them. And it felt like it was meant to be. But that’s over, too.’

Daryl urged Maggie to ‘come on home,’ saying, ‘it’s not decided with Negan. Not yet.’

The next morning when the group woke up, Kelly had gone walking in the woods.

She was eventually found looking at a truck with a jacket atop it, wondering if it was Connie’s.

Elijah climbed up and threw it down for her, as Maggie relayed that he’d also lost his sister.

The group kept going through the woods and finally reached the place where Maggie’s group had been staying, finding it on fire.

Hershel was missing, and two people were dead—the work of The Reapers, Cole knew, explaining that the same group had earlier destroyed their village.

Returning to the woods, Daryl tracked the attackers and saw that Hershel had walked off.

He decided they should split up, too, figuring it would be the fastest way to find the boy.

That left Kelly with Elijah, and she empathized with his pain over losing his sister.

She urged him to remove his mask, and told him he was not alone in the fight.

Daryl and Maggie then spotted a woman walking through the brush, who was followed by two other people—all of them members of Maggie’s newer tribe.

When Maggie asked what happened to them, the woman said she wasn’t really sure; she only knew that suddenly their home was on fire.

‘We know who did it,’ a grizzled man said. ‘The goddamn Reapers. They’re in these woods, hunting us one by one.’

Just then, the man was shot in the neck by an unseen force, and everyone’s heads whipped around. Maggie’s three pals were picked off by gunshots, then Maggie stepped into a trap that pulled her up into a tree.

She cut herself loose and faced off against a shooter, whom Kelly then shot with an arrow.

‘Who are you?’ Maggie asked the man, pointing her own arrows at him. ‘You can answer my questions or die. It’s your choice. Why’d you do it?’

The man smiled at her and pulled a pin from a grenade in his jacket.

‘Pope marked you,’ he said, as it exploded and killed him.

Amid a hail of blood and guts, Maggie and Daryl moved on.

As she walked through the forest, Maggie whistled quietly for Hershel.

Suddenly she felt something hit her head, tossed down from above.

‘Hey mom!’ Hershel said from the tree branch he was sitting on.

That night the group made camp at a building near the forest. Kelly and Maggie talked about their lost sisters, with Kelly rightly surmising that Maggie was the oldest of her siblings because she looked out for everyone.

Daryl poked his head into their room and suggested that they scout the area.

‘Nothing follows us back to Alexandria,’ Maggie insisted, letting Daryl know she was going to be heading back there with him.

In the daylight, the group arrived at the safe-zone and found Carol eyeballing its half-destroyed buildings.

‘What the he** happened?’ Daryl asked.

‘Whisperers left a parting gift,’ Carol said.

Negan stood by observing the new arrivals, his thoughts impenetrable.

‘So this is home sweet home?’ Cole asked.

‘Yeah,’ Maggie said, taking Hershel’s hand and walking right past Negan. ‘It is.’

The Walking Dead will return next week on AMC.