Negan Is the King of New York! Everything to Know About 'The Walking Dead: Dead City' Season 2

Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan and Lauren Cohan as Maggie Rhee in AMC's 'The Walking Dead: Dead City'

The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 is on the way, bringing more walkers and villains to take bites out of the Big Apple.

The AMC hit spinoff is filming its second season, due in 2025, with Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan set to reprise their longtime roles of Maggie Rhee and Negan Smith.

Dead City earned the biggest AMC+ premiere in the young streamer's history, according to Variety, and the franchise has showed pretty much zero signs of slowing down anytime soon—and Morgan doesn't want it to, either.

"We're shooting year two of Dead City. I still like playing Negan, and I should say I never thought I’d still like him," he previously told Parade. "He’s moving and grooving. It’s not one-note. Every year I can find something different to hold on to that feels new to me. That's why I like him so much."

So do we—but Maggie? Eh, she's not quite there yet. Here's everything to know so far about The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2, including potential cast and release date timeframe.

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When is The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 release date?

Though a specific release date hasn't yet been announced, we do know the show will be back sometime in 2025. Watch this space for updates!

Will there be a Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2?

There sure will!

How many episodes are in The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2?

Walker Stalkers, rejoice! The Walking Dead: Dead City expanded to eight episodes for Season 2 from Season 1's six-episode run.

Where does Season 2 of The Walking Dead: Dead City take place?

Season 2 of Dead City has been filming quite a bit in Massachusetts. It's speculated that it will take place largely in the show's New Babylon, which is on the mainland away from Manhattan.

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Is The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 streaming?

Season 2 hasn't yet premiered, so it isn't streaming just yet. When it does, it'll likely be on AMC+.

Who is in The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 cast?

Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan Smith

Jeffrey Dean Morgan will return as reformed Big Bad Negan Smith in Season 2. In Season 1, he reunited with his signature leather jacket and longtime love, Lucille, once more. (For the uninitiated, Lucille is a barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat named after his late wife that he long used to kill walkers ... and a lot of people, most famously Maggie's husband, Glenn Rhee, played by Steven Yeun.)

"I was so happy. It was just awesome to have on the leather jacket and to have Lucille in my hand. I can't tell you how much I miss her," Morgan told Entertainment Weekly. "There's something about holding that bat in a scene that makes me feel whole."

"There is a relationship that I will forever have with that piece of wood wrapped in barbed wire—that I will have as Jeff," he added. "It's incredibly special because for whatever reason, on that first day when Negan comes out of the trailer and the first couple days that we shot, I really bonded in an odd way to this object. And it indicated so much of what I did as an actor. It indicated the lean back. It indicated so much of the physicality of who Negan was by just holding it. Everything kind of stemmed from that bat."

In Season 1, Negan got creative with a cheese grater (you have to see it to believe it), and we're betting on more gross goodness in Season 2.

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Lauren Cohan as Maggie Rhee

Lauren Cohan reprises her role as Maggie Rhee (nee Greene). She and Negan have come a long way in learning to trust each other after he, you know, brutally murdered her husband while she was pregnant. The pair have worked together in the Big Apple to protect her and the late Glenn's son, Hershel Rhee, and to try to restore some semblance of civilization among survivors.

In Season 2, Maggie will have to decide whether to stick by Negan or to finally avenge Glenn, an obsession she's harbored since Negan savagely killed him in The Walking Dead Season 7 premiere.

In the Season 1 finale, Maggie tells Hershel, "I don't know how, but this thing with Negan… I'm gonna finish it. So I can just let it go."

Fans of the show and the character know that that could be taken a lot of different ways.

"I am hesitant to say, because I know what it means, and I don't want people to be directed, because I have heard so many different perceptions of that moment," she told Entertainment Weekly. "And I love seeing how differently people take it. So I certainly know what it is, and it makes me more excited to do a second season. It makes me really interested to put all that down on paper and on film, because the best part of this character yet is this place that she can go now. And it was not what I ever imagined."

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Logan Kim as Hershel Rhee

Logan Kim will return as Hershel Rhee, Maggie and the late Glenn Rhee's son.

In the comics, as Hershel grows up, his character is reminiscent of Sebastian Milton: Manipulative, entitled, and, to be frank, kind of a jerk. The character showed some of those qualities beginning to emerge in Season 1, though much of it could be written off as adolescent angst: He doesn't want to do weapons training, he doesn't listen to his mom and he ruined a drawing when Maggie said she liked it.

The character was kidnapped and tortured by The Croat in Season 1, leading Maggie to enlist Negan for help when she recognized his captors' whistle as being the same used by The Saviors.

In the Season 1 finale, when he and Maggie are reunited, Hershel tells her, "I'm right here, but you don't see me."

Cohan told Entertainment Weekly that their relationship is central to the series, explaining, "What's really interesting here is that what people might say is, 'Oh, she's enraged because she's lost the father to help her raise her son. And it is that, but it's also the place in time that she's frozen in because of this thing that happened has made her in so many ways locked and so desperate to melt some of this rigid place in her heart so that she can be healed, be with her son, and be full and flexible and imperfect as herself and as a parent."

?eljko Ivanek as The Croat

?eljko Ivanek starred as the villain of Season 1, known as The Croat, an alternative energy scientist and likely a complete psychopath.

Ivanek's character kidnapped Hershel with his group The Burazi, a group of survivors who have no issue brutally murdering anyone who gets in their way (and even many who don't) in order to use the methane their corpses emit as a fuel source.

In Season 1, it's revealed that The Croat had a wife and children who were murdered and eaten by cannibals early in the zombie apocalypse. Devastated, he was one of the first members of The Saviors, but he grew too sociopathic even for Negan. Negan actually tried to kill The Croat because he was so sadistic, comparing to a "rabid dog" that needed to "be put down." When Negan shot The Croat, he missed, taking off part of The Croat's ear but not killing him.

The Croat eventually fled to New York City, where he and The Burazi reside in Madison Square Garden—and give a sick new meaning to the phrase "human resources."

"You know, he's like a child. Negan was the first person that wrapped him up in safety after all the stuff happened to his family. He just kind of wandered until he wandered into Negan's world, and that was the first place where he had any sense of safety again, any sense of belonging," Ivanek previously told AMC of The Croat's backstory and motivations. "The showmanship that Negan ran the place with was all very romantic and enticing, and he's trying to recreate that. He has his own versions of things that are all about bonding the group."

He added, "So, in The Croat’s eyes [Negan is] a brother, but also almost like a father figure. It's almost like he thinks, 'Here's the person who will protect me. Here's the person I can count on.' Because for all that he's established himself, I think there's still a hole in there that Negan fills. He thinks, 'That's the person that I can rely on that can protect me at the end of the day—being in his orbit is what will save me.' There's something very parent/child about it to me."

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Lisa Emery as The Dama

Lisa Emery will reprise her role as the somewhat mysterious Croat ally (and boss!) The Dama, who she calls a "delicious villain." In the Season 1 finale, she and Negan formed what was, for him, an uneasy alliance to take over Manhattan.

Emery previously appeared in Madam Secretary with Ivanek and was happy to reunite with him in Dead City.

"I've followed him for so long. I've seen him in a lot of stage stuff and of course movies and TV. I don't know—I felt like he was an old buddy when we re-met on this set," she told AMC. "I think he's such a great actor. He's really, really good, and really creepy and yet vulnerable in this. Apart from liking the character of The Dama so much, I was over the moon that I was going to get to be working with him."

Gaius Charles as Perlie Armstrong

New Jersey born-and-bred actor Gaius Charles stars as Perlie Armstrong and will be back for a second season. In Season 1, Perlie, a marshal, tracked Negan from New Babylon to Manhattan.

Charles told NJ Advance Media that filming the series in New Jersey was a pretty joyous experience.

"We filmed a lot in Newark, we filmed a lot in just places that I’ve grown up in, that I’ve seen as a kid, as a teenager," he said. "There were a lot of locations that just felt cool to know what was around me, know the environment, know where to get a coffee."

His character's experiences are obviously a lot less happy.

"Trauma affects us all, and so to get into Armstrong's trauma, to get into why he does the things he does, and how his worldview and how his morals are challenged, and how they do evolve over the journey of the show, was really a cool process," he said. "One thing that the show does so well is it doesn't always allow you to get into this clear delineation of black and white. It's so nuanced, and I really enjoy exploring the nuances of the character in that way."

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Mahina Napoleon as Ginny David

Mahina Napoleon will return as Ginny David, a young orphan whose history with Negan is long and complicated. In the first part of Season 1, she is fiercely loyal to Negan, who is tremendously kind to her, and dislikes Maggie for how she treats him. Ginny rarely ever speaks except to Negan—and she regresses back into her self-imposed silence when Negan tells her that he killed her father.

While her character isn't a fan of Negan anymore, Napoleon adores Morgan.

"He's really funny and fun to work with," she told AMC. "He's very, very, very kind and he is really nothing like his character at all. He’s very professional on set and really would inspire me to get into my character."

Kim Coates as Bruegel

Kim Coates was announced as joining the cast of The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 as Bruegel, a cunning and brutal gang leader in New York. He's previously starred in Sons of Anarchy.

Is there a The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 trailer?

While no trailer has been released yet, there is a behind-the-scenes teaser, in which we can see Kim Rhodes in action, as well as some fun-looking stunts and Lauren Cohan getting silly.

Will The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 be on Netflix?

Not any time soon, but once it comes out, you can stream it on AMC+ (or with a free trial of AMC+ on Amazon Prime).

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