Lauren Cohan hopes to play Maggie on Walking Dead shows 'forever'

Sometimes endings can also be new beginnings. While The Walking Dead commences its final run of episodes this Sunday night on AMC (with the series finale slated for Nov. 20), The Walking Dead franchise is just getting started with a whole new slate of spin-offs.

That includes an upcoming Daryl Dixon spin-off set in France, a Rick and Michonne reunion, and a highly anticipated trip to New York City for enemies-turned-allies Maggie and Negan for the upcoming The Walking Dead: Dead City.

Josh Stringer/AMC Lauren Cohan on 'The Walking Dead'

The last of that spin-off trifecta is deep into filming in New Jersey, and Lauren Cohan says that for her and costar Jeffrey Dean Morgan, there was definitely an adjustment in terms of blending the old with the new. "Jeff and I know the ropes," says Cohan. "And then we just get to be here with a whole group of new people. These are characters that we've been with for a really long time, but now we do it in this whole new landscape with New York, which is so cool."

The on-screen location is not the only big difference between her soon-to-be-former show and what's next. In the past few seasons, the list of cast regulars on The Walking Dead seemed roughly equivalent to the population of Texas, but Dead City will firmly follow the two leads, which Cohan — who is also a producer on the series — says allows showrunner Eli Jorné to delve even deeper: "The story that Eli has written lets us really go into the dark night of the soul in a way that you don't always get to do with a huge cast."

Of course, things between Maggie and Negan started on about as dark a note as one can imagine when the latter bashed the former's husband's brains in with a barbed-wire covered baseball bat. (Like we said, dark.) The fact that Maggie never exacted revenge is surprising. The fact that they formed an uneasy alliance and ended up working together is downright shocking. But that doesn't mean everything is hunky dory between the pair — as some leaked fan-shot footage from the set of Maggie holding a knife to Negan's neck certainly proves.

Eli Ade/AMC Lauren Cohan on 'The Walking Dead'

"It's not just the intricacies of Maggie and Negan," says Cohan of the dynamic between the duo. "It's the intricacies of the space between those two people and how they're going to be forced to face the ways they're so different and the ways that they may not be so different. That to me has just been incredibly invigorating."

In fact, it has been so invigorating that Cohan — who left The Walking Dead in the middle of season 9 to star in ABC's Whiskey Cavalier, yet returned at the end of season 10 — now sees no end to her affiliation with Maggie. "When people say to me, 'Wow, you've been doing that show so long,' I say, 'And I hope I do it forever.'"

She feels that pull to both character and project on set daily. "We were doing some stuff on the new show where Jeff and I are in the scene with two other characters," says the actress, a smile plastered across her face, "And I just looked at him and I was like, 'There it is. There's the heart of all of it.' Whatever this is that the show has always asked of all of us, of how we would respond to this life, is so enduring for me to keep looking at."

And if she has her way, she (and we) will be looking at it for a very long time.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Related content:

• Dead end: On set for the final days of The Walking Dead

• Jeffrey Dean Morgan on almost walking away from The Walking Dead

• The Walking Dead still working on possible post-credits series finale scene

• The Walking Dead's new smart zombies go all the way back to season 1

• Norman Reedus says 'I thought I was going to die' after injury on set of The Walking Dead

• Melissa McBride talks future of Carol after The Walking Dead

• Maggie and Negan Walking Dead spin-off gets new title

• Exclusive first images from the final episodes of The Walking Dead

• Lauren Cohan reveals The Walking Dead cast pact made on the last day of filming

• The Walking Dead showrunner reveals what that final coin flip was for