Jeffrey Dean Morgan says The Walking Dead: Dead City season 3 is the strongest chapter of the spinoff so far, and he is making that claim just as the new season has premiered at the Monte-Carlo TV Festival and heads toward its AMC debut on Sunday, July 26. “This is our best season—by far. This is such a different relationship now,” he said, putting the focus on the shift between Maggie and Negan.
That kind of confidence matters because the first two seasons did not land with the same force. Dead City season 1 holds an 80% score on Rotten Tomatoes, while season 2 sits at 63%, a spread that makes any talk of a new high point harder to dismiss and easier to test when viewers finally see the episodes. Morgan’s argument is not just that the story has moved on, but that Negan has too.
He said Negan has become more multidimensional in season 3, describing him as a character who still carries the weight of the man who “walked out of a trailer 11 years ago,” but now has more layers. “Negan was a great villain and now he just got more layers,” Morgan said. “This year there’s such a shift in their relationship that brings out yet another side of him.”
That relationship sits at the center of Dead City, the The Walking Dead spinoff in which Maggie and Negan have a long history and now plan to take back Manhattan from New Babylon. The setup gives Morgan’s comments a built-in test: if the season really is better, it will have to show it through the changing dynamic between the two characters, not just through bigger stakes or familiar franchise momentum.
The answer will arrive when Dead City season 3 reaches AMC on Sunday, July 26. Until then, Morgan has set a high bar for a show that has already proved it can draw attention, but not always agreement, and the next run will have to justify his confidence on screen.
