The Walking Dead season 11 Part 2 ended with Eugene and the real Stephanie, Max Mercer, played by Margot Bingham, on a cliffhanger for Part 3.

The final season revealed that The Walking Dead Stephanie was a fake all along. It turned out the Commonwealth radio operator was Max Mercer, right in time for her and Eugene to reunite before the cliffhanger-filled mid-season finale. Max, played by Margot Bingham, was confirmed as the real Stephanie in episode 5 “Out of the Ashes,” but Eugene didn’t learn her identity until episode 11 “Rogue Element.” The Stephanie he’d met and fallen in love with was a decoy, and with Mercer outing herself as the voice from the radio, it turned out there never was a Stephanie.

By the mid-season break, things aren’t looking good for the human survivors of AMC’s zombie wasteland. The Commonwealth turned out too good to be true. Before Eugene and his group were admitted into the community, the leaders of the Commonwealth planned to use them as a source of information. This plan included Eugene meeting a decoy Stephanie, who he fell for. Eugene was heartbroken to learn Stephanie was actually Shira, an agent working for Lance Hornsby. All wasn’t lost for Eugene though, as at the episode’s climax Max made herself known, and he finally met the real “Stephanie.”

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The Walking Dead Stephanie/Max Twist Explained

Toward the end of season 10, Alexandria was crumbling. The shelter the survivors relied on was starting to come undone, and the threat of starvation loomed. Eugene’s plan to make contact with Stephanie and ask for help from her people, the Commonwealth, seemed like a good idea to some Alexandria citizens including Ezekiel, Yumiko, and Princess. Unfortunately, the Commonwealth caught wind of the plan and intercepted the group.

To take things further, they tricked Eugene. The Walking Dead Stephanie was a fake, trying to gather information about Alexandria. The fake Stephanie took Eugene to get ice cream, which is where he first met the real Stephanie (aka Max). Eugene’s happiness only lasted for six episodes, with the Commonwealth and decoy Stephanie keeping up their ruse. She even dated Eugene, sharing his bed. It wasn’t until Eugene professed his love for fake Stephanie, and she reciprocated that she got cold feet and brutally ended their relationship.

This was when Eugene learned of her identity as Shira, and that the Stephanie he’d met and fallen for was a construct created by Shira and Hornsby to gain information about Alexandria. It’s at this point that Max approaches a heartbroken Eugene and reveals herself as the true Stephanie using callsigns from their radio conversations across season 10.

The Walking Dead viewers were dubious of Shira’s decoy Stephanie from her debut and speculation around both her and Max’s identity as the real Stephanie surfaced online as soon as Episode 5 aired. In Episode 12, “The Lucky Ones”, theories were confirmed or squashed, as Max Mercer explained she was the real Stephanie, that their radio friendship was genuine, and she’d been forced by her brother to keep quiet and allow the decoy Stephanie to trick Eugene.

Over the next few episodes, the two developed a romantic connection and kissed by Episode 15, “Trust”. For fan-favorite Eugene, that might have been a satisfying conclusion to his character arc.

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What Happened To Eugene And Max On TWD

However, Eugene ended up playing a bigger role in the second half of the final season. While The Walking Dead Stephanie turned out to be someone who he eventually found love with in Max, he also lost someone even closer to him. But, in the end, Eugene got a happy ending anyway. In The Walking Dead comics, Eugene ended up moving on to help set up a railroad system between different societies with Stephanie by his side. However, in the flash forward in the comics, Stephanie had died and Eugene was in failing health as well.

The good news is that The Walking Dead TV series chose not to go that route and got an even happier ending. In the finale, Eugene had to do the hardest thing he ever had to do when he watched his close friend Rosita die after a zombie bite. It was hard to watch, as fans knew that he was deeply in love with Rosita before the two ended up as just close friends by the end. Despite that, he lost his closest friend in the world. After that loss, Eugene gained a family with Max.

The flash forward scene in the finale saw that The Walking Dead Stephanie twist didn’t hurt Eugene at all. Instead, it reconfirmed how he really felt about Max and the two of them ended up together, giving Eugene the one thing he always longed for in his life. Not only did this scene show Eugene visiting the memorial one year after the huge climax, but he did so with his wife Max, and their baby daughter, Rosie. His future remains in question, but happily, The Walking Dead ended with Eugene and Max living happily ever after with their new baby.