Lauren Cohan will film only six episode of season nine (Picture: Gene Page/AMC)

Longtime cast member Lauren Cohan will leave The Walking Dead after six episodes of the new season.

Cohan, who plays strong-willed farmer Maggie Greene, first appeared on the show in season two and has since gone on to feature in a whopping 108 episodes.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cohan has opted to leave the long-running zombie series after booking the lead in ABC’s upcoming FBI series Whiskey Cavalier; efforts to renegotiate a deal were unsuccessful and Cohan will reportedlu shoot only six episodes of season nine.

The news comes just days after it was announced that face of the franchise Andrew Lincoln will leave the programme.




Lincoln plays the central role of Rick Grimes – a former sheriff deputy who was shot in the line of duty. The Walking Dead director Michael Satrazemis confirmed his exit on Instagram recently, paying tribute to ‘one of the greatest men I have ever met’.

He also assured fans that the next series of the show would still be ‘great’, but ‘different’.

Lincoln will be phased out of the post-apocalyptic narrative in a similar way to Lauren Cohan and will also only shoot around six episodes of season nine.

With two of its biggest characters heading towards the exit, The Walking Dead will instead make Norman Reedus’ Daryl Dixon the main protagonist going forward.

Norman Reedus’s Daryl Dixon will take centre stage going forward (Picture: Gene Page/AMC)

Dixon is a former Prison Council member, hunter for the Atlanta Survivor Group and last surviving member of his family.

Reedus has reportedly negotiated a $20million pay bump to account for his increased screen time.

Cohan’s exit from The Walking Dead comes just weeks after she told Entertainment Weekly there was ‘a lot more Maggie story to tell’ on the show.

‘I’m coming back,’ she confirmed. You know we’re not allowed to tell you anything, but it’s so good.’

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