Dead City’ Just Delivered a Violent Villain Turn After 7 Episodes

Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3, Episode 7.

In Episode 307 of The Walking Dead: Dead City, entitled “Hourglass,” things wrapped up in dangerously scary new ways as Dillard (Jimmi Simpson) was pushed beyond his breaking point. The moment that Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) killed both of his walker pets, Dillard’s heartbreak caused a fracture that couldn’t be repaired. And the more things progressed, the more Dillard wanted revenge and to hurt his friend even more deeply than he was hurting himself. It also left things in a place where it feels like there’s still room for things to spiral even further before all is said and done this season.

Collider recently got the opportunity to chat with Simpson about the events of Season 3’s penultimate episode. During the interview, he discussed Dillard’s tragic backstory and why he lived the way he did in this community, how he and Negan connected over not fitting in, cracking Dillard’s mind and breaking his heart, why he wants to kill Maggie, putting on the police uniform, how much he enjoyed working with Morgan, and why he wouldn’t have wanted to change where Dillard ends up in the finale.​​​​​

Dillard Would Have Been Happy To Live Out His Days Alongside Negan and His Walkers

“It was a mutually beneficial love affair with friends.”

COLLIDER: There is a chunk of this season where Dillard and Negan are just hanging out in a bar and spending their days together. Do you think he believed that he could just go on forever that way with his pet zombies and Negan and everything would just be fine?

JIMMI SIMPSON: Oh, 1,000%. Dillard found a real peace because of his really tragic history in the human world before this particular apocalypse. Everything was difficult about how humans treated each other, to him as a police officer. And so, there is this real sense of relief for him to only be in a world where the humanoid characters’ intentions are clear, their motivations are the same, and they don’t lie. We may see a hermit and it’s like, “Oh, gosh, that must be awful.” They are actually very happy. Something has happened that has made them finally be like, “Oh, this is where I’m more comfortable.” And that’s where Dillard was.

And so, when Negan enters his bar, he’s like, “Who are you?” We’ve both been doubted by a lot of people, so we have that in common. That sparked an immediate friendship and an ability to see each other the way others don’t see us. I bring in a little bit of weird. You see Negan with those glasses, and he can just be his straight-up weird self. And he brought Dillard this understanding of, “Humans are actually pretty cool. You don’t need to save so much space for walkers in your life. You can let humans in too.” It was a mutually beneficial love affair with friends. It only would have kept on going. They would have done everything together. Everything would have made sense. In my mind, the way I saw Dillard’s experience, they were set up for a real sweet life.

That first scene in Episode 7, when Dillard walks back into the bar to talk to Negan and Fabian’s bloody body is on the floor is pretty intense. He realizes Negan shot one of his walkers just before he shoots the other one. What was it like to share all of that with Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and to have the relationship that you built up over the other episodes really take a turn in that way?

SIMPSON: It was such a pleasure. All the beats were so emotionally grounded. Neither Negan nor Dillard strayed from who they are. Negan believes very strongly and has seen way more shit in the Walker world than Dillard has. Dillard’s contrast was that humans are tough, these guys are easy. Negan had to fight tooth and nail to stay alive, for years and years and years. So, he was just following his own impulse. It just happens that it clashed so deeply with Dillard’s emotional truth of how everybody else sees a Walker and thinks, “How do I get away from that?” And Dillard thinks, “Well, maybe we’re not giving these guys a fair shake.” Like any kind of creature with claws and nails that might be designed to kill, they still are true.

I thought the writers just set it up beautifully and the friendship was so tangible. Luckily, Jeffrey and I just fell in love with each other as bros, so that’s infused. All of that relationship was very authentic to me. And then, the clashing of belief systems, when he takes my family from me, it was deeply emotionally connected in a couple of ways. Not only were the walkers his family, and the ones that have never lied to him, tricked him, or done anything like that, but by taking them away, Negan took away our friendship, and that was the undiscovered country for Dillard of love. That was like, “Oh, this can be an addition to your life.” It’s why Dillard allowed himself to have a little crush and let go and really be at peace with humans.

So, to break all those things at once was the perfect way to crack a human being’s mind and to break their heart. And then, in the next scene, cutting your face and blaming someone else is generally not a sign that things are going great. That was just a perfect articulation of his emotional interior. That was such a joy to be able to have that little catalyst of, first, my family is taken away, my new friend is taken away, and then I start destroying myself because I’m so broken-hearted. Like any heartbroken person, you want the other person to feel the pain too. And so, that’s where that mission came from.

Dillard Is Out for Revenge Against Negan With the Events of Episode 7 in ‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’ Season 3

“He wants to take Maggie away from Negan.”

Image via AMC

The moment he decides he’s in charge and he kills Renata definitely crosses a line he can’t come back from. And then, he declares they’re also going to kill Maggie and not just Negan. Is he just completely out of his mind by that point? Does he have any rational thought left?

SIMPSON: No more out of his mind than someone who’s had their heart broken and then screams or has an interaction with that former lover and tells them off. It’s coming from a place that they believe is true, but as an outsider, you’re like, “Wow, you’re really overreacting.” When your friend has a broken heart, they don’t go and start murdering people, but they behave in ways that are just like, “Wow, that’s not serving you.” But you need to let them have that. So, Dillard’s experience just deeply turned up. Renata and Maggie are all deeply attached to Dillard’s love of Negan, and then broken heart because of Negan.

Saying “because” is just Dillard’s perception. Negan didn’t try to break his heart. He just happened to follow his own path, and that resulted in loss for Dillard. The goal is to make Negan feel pain. Once Negan broke his heart, Renata doesn’t matter. That’s just one more element that Dillard can be like, “I’ll take that.” I think Dillard had this deep perception on the quality of Maggie and Negan’s actual friendship, even though they’re always like, “Do I trust you?” He saw that there’s this storied connection that will probably inevitably last forever. And so, it wasn’t anything Maggie did that made Dillard want to kill Maggie. It’s Negan, and he wants to take Maggie away from Negan.

By the time that he puts the police uniform on, is he just a full-on villain by that point? Did you see that as his super villain costume?

SIMPSON: I saw that as a way for a person going through a thing to try to back up his broken, emotional inside. It’s also an abandonment of the peace he’d felt in the past two eras – the friendship with humans and his peace with the walker world. He’s like, “You’ve taken me back three eras to when I was a cop and I truly believed humans were disgusting, and when I thought that humans are damaging and a problem for the world. You forced me to go back there.” It wasn’t for effect. It was like, “I have nothing left besides this old me that I’ve really tried to let go, and I thought you had helped me, Negan, truly let it go. But you showed me that nothing changes, so I’ve got to go back to square one, where that was.” It all makes sense. I really love playing people that have insane situations and then react in a way that makes total sense to them, even though it might be outrageous to those watching. It’s all connected emotionally, very clearly, to me.

Jimmi Simpson Wouldn’t Want Dillard To End Up Any Other Way in ‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’

“It’s part of the reason I signed on to do this.”

When I spoke to Jeffrey Dean Morgan about the season, he thought that where Dillard ends up at the end of the season was the perfect ending for the character. Without spoilers about Dillard’s exact fate in the finale, how do you feel about where he was left? Would you have wanted something different for him? Do you also feel like it was the perfect ending for your character?

SIMPSON: It’s part of the reason I signed on to do this. I thought it was such a clear articulation of struggle and then homecoming. He would have lived happily ever after in his bar with his walkers. Maybe he would have to change them out as body parts fell. He only has so much tape and glue. It’s this community that accepted him and he finally became part of it. As I spoke to the showrunner about maybe doing the show, it was a pleasure to learn [that his ending] came with a sigh of relief. Truly, the ending is just irreplaceable. It all made sense to me. I was really grateful for that arc to be so thoughtful and complete from the team at Dead City.

The Walking Dead: Dead City airs on AMC.

Release Date

June 15, 2023

Network

AMC

Showrunner

Eli Jorne, Seth Hoffman

Directors

Kevin Dowling, Loren Yaconelli

Writers

Brenna Kouf