Here's Why 'Walking Dead' Fans Shouldn't Expect Maggie To Give Birth Anytime Soon

Fans of The Walking Dead have begun to notice something very strange about the show's timeline now that Maggie Rhee is expecting: though years have passed offscreen, she hasn't seemed to move forward in her pregnancy at all. It's left many wondering how long Maggie has been pregnant on The Walking Dead, because it feels like an eternity.

Maggie announced her pregnancy way back in Season 6, which was airing in late 2015. It's been well over two years since then, but somehow Maggie isn't showing even a little. The show hasn't indicated any complications in her pregnancy, so she hasn't lost the baby; she's just been several weeks pregnant for a really, really long time. That's explained away by the fact that time moves much slower in-universe; what was years to the audience is only weeks to the characters.

Uproxx deduced that Maggie was only about two months along ahead of Season 8, because little more than a month passed between her announcement and the end of Season 6. Season 7 only spanned 19 days. Still, that doesn't account for every inconsistency. In the same period of time Judith has visibly aged at least two years. Even Maggie's haircut seems to be growing out faster than her pregnancy is progressing.

Showrunner Scott M. Gimple talked to Entertainment Weekly about the slow-moving situation and made it clear that Maggie wouldn't be giving birth until Season 9, at the earliest. At this rate, with less than a month passing over the course of every season, it could even be Season 10 or later before fans get to see the littlest Rhee running around Hilltop. Gimple didn't reveal any plans about the future of Maggie's pregnancy, but Lauren Cohan did sympathize with fans' frustration. She told EW:

I always want to put a little ticker tape along the bottom of the episode saying how far into the apocalypse and into the pregnancy we are. Because I'm playing newly pregnant for a really long time. But the truth of the matter is, it's only been a matter of weeks since Negan killed Glenn.

Creator and producer Robert Kirkman also commented on Maggie's lengthy gestation period during a Q&A panel at the Walker Stalker Cruise 2018. He joked about it while also encouraging fans to suspend their disbelief when it came to the contradictions the glacial timeline might produce. ComicBook.com reported him saying:

She'll start showing when people start showing, when she's been pregnant for like 80 months. That's how pregnancy works, right? I don't do a lot of research. Time doesn't really... it moves linearly, but it doesn't move in clips that can be tracked. You may have seen that she's been pregnant for two seasons, but those two seasons could take place over two months, just by Chandler Riggs' continued aging. But there's gotta be some suspension of disbelief.

Perhaps The Walking Dead should start time-stamping their episodes, because otherwise fans might continue be confused about why it's taking so long for Maggie to look pregnant. It's clear the war against Negan has become the priority over the last few year and that has left other, more personal plot lines on the backburner until he's taken care of. Maggie already has enough on her plate when it comes to making sure the residents of Hilltop are safe; her pregnancy is an important part of her story, but right now it's not the part taking precedence.

It may be unsatisfying for some viewers for the story to unfold so slowly, but at least everyone watching at home can rest assured that nothing is wrong with Maggie or the baby. Little Rhee is just taking its time to arrive.

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