‘The Walking Dead’ Reveals More Negan Comic Book Backstory

The Walking Dead 904, “The Obliged,” divulged new details about incarcerated former Savior leader Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) borrowed from creator Robert Kirkman’s comic books.

In Season Eight, Negan confessed to Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) his prized barbwire-wrapped baseball bat is named for his late wife, Lucille, who Negan revealed died from sickness at the onset of the apocalypse.

Negan admitted he cheated on the real Lucille and when she died and turned, he couldn’t put her down; something he said made him “weak.”

Following his defeat at the hands of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), Negan has spent the past 19 months in solitary confinement in Alexandria’s jail.

In 904, Michonne (Danai Guria), overseeing day-to-day operations at Alexandria, acts as interim food handler, giving a self-starving Negan 20 minutes to talk on the condition he feeds himself.

“I am grateful my wife didn’t have to see me like this,” a bearded and withering Negan tells her.

Michonne chuckles. “As opposed to the a—hole you were before?”

A solemn Negan says Lucille “was an angel. She deserved better than she got.”

Michonne, almost begrudgingly, asks what happened to her.

“What used to happen. Cancer,” Negan says. “We would have loved to have had a kid. We would have loved to have had a kid like Carl. You were lucky.”

After Michonne tells Negan she thinks about the late Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs) “every damn day,” Negan sniffs around. He’s figured out Carl wasn’t her first.

Negan pushes, getting Michonne to explain what happened to her son, Andre, who “just didn’t make it.”

He apologizes. Michonne says she’s made peace with the loss, prompting Negan to note “it’s better this way.”

“My wife… she wasn’t made for this,” he explains. “She was weak. When she died, there was a part of me that was relieved. I know she made me… not weak. And with you, with you it’s the same.”

Michonne takes offense. She growls they’re not the same, but Negan pushes again, attempting to lure her into admitting she’s grateful Andre is gone.

“Because you know all he would have done is make you weak,” he says, pressing a now furious Michonne into dumping his food and leaving.

Michonne, who has been sneaking out under the cover of night to slay walkers and combat the mundanity of domesticated life, later returns. Negan tells her she’s trapped.

“We’re the same. All or nothing,” Negan taunts. “You were trapped, same as me, you’re connected to the dead, same as me. We’re the same, and you can’t stand that we’re the same.”

There’s more than bars and bricks separating the two, and Michonne puts it in his face.

“No. We’re not. Yeah, we do what we need to to get sh-t done, but you get a kick out of it. Me? I’m trying every day to make things better. Thinking of ways to bring people together, not pitting them against each other,” she says.

“I sacrifice and I compromise, and yeah, I do get strength from the dead, but I live for the living. And I make no apologies for that. My sons are gone. But this world is going to be better for my daughter, and for every other child that comes into it.”

A half-defeated Negan says there’s “nothing worse than nothing.”

“Long as you’re still breathing,” she fires back, “it’s not nothing.”

He asks to see Lucille.

“There are things in this world that we desperately hold onto when there’s nothing left,” he admits. “I want to see her. I need to see her.”

Michonne laughs at the audacity.

“Negan,” she says, smiling, “we don’t have your bat.”

Negan lets slip a defiant “no.”

“Where is she?” he asks, pressed against the bars of his cage. “What did you do with her?”

“Still out there,” Michonne says, completely nonchalant.

“No!” a teary Negan yells. “No!”

Michonne tells him to eat and leaves.

“I am gonna see my Lucille,” Negan says through gritted teeth before ramming his head into his cell wall repeatedly.

The details are lifted from mini-series Here’s Negan, which recounted the villain’s earliest experiences in the apocalypse, detailing his origins and revealing how he came to possess his prized weapon and emerge as the de facto leader of the Saviors.

That series saw Negan break things off with his mistress in favor of spending more time with his withering wife, who would die and reanimate in her hospital bed in front of a terrified Negan. Despite his lack of faithfulness, Negan was tender when caring to the ailed Lucille, tearfully admitting to her that she was “everything” to him and that she deserved “so much better.”

Morgan has since said he hopes to bring Here’s Negan to screen in a potential movie.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.