Here’s What Really Happened to Negan’s Wife Lucille on The Walking Dead

"Here's Negan" answers what really happened to Negan's (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) late wife Lucille (Hilarie Burton Morgan) when The Walking Dead flashes back to the earliest days of the zombie apocalypse. Spoilers for The Walking Dead's extended Season 10 finale. Negan has over the years revealed pieces of his past when telling stories about his cancer-stricken wife — his barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat's namesake — once confessing to Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) that he was too "weak" to put her down after she died. He later told Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Alpha (Samantha Morton) about his wife's pancreatic cancer, but Negan and Lucille's tragic love story went untold — until now.

A flashback to 12 years ago: Negan and Lucille hunkered down in their basement seven months into the apocalypse. When their stash of refrigerated chemotherapy drugs accidentally thaws, Negan wants to track down a rumored mobile clinic in the area but Lucille asks him to stay.

"We went down swinging. Now it's time for you to go on without me," she tells him. "I need you to do my fighting for me, okay? Stay." But Negan refuses to give up. He tells his wife he's going to find the doctors and bring her the drugs she needs. Lucille gives Negan a kiss goodbye.

Six weeks later, Negan holds up Franklin (Miles Mussenden) outside of an RV and trailer. Franklin's daughter Laura (Lindsley Register) disarms Negan with the swing of a baseball bat. When Negan awakes, Franklin and Laura hand him a cooler with Lucille's life-saving drugs: they just want to help.

Another two or three days later, Negan is captured by a motorcycle gang that owns the road at night. Valak's Vipers leader Baxter (Rodney Rowland) threatens to pour the cooler's contents down the toilet if Negan doesn't point them to the clinic's medical stockpile. "Either you tell me where you got 'em," the gang leader says of the chemo drugs, "or I pull this trigger and your wife dies thinking you ran out on her."

He ultimately gives up Franklin and Laura's location to save Lucille and returns home to the Smith residence. Written on the basement door is a message: "Please don't leave me like this."

Negan finds Lucille has reanimated, her head covered by a zip-tied plastic bag. Three emptied bottles of pills sit next to the bed where Lucille has affixed herself, knowing Negan would find her turned.

The zombified Lucille is spared being bludgeoned by Negan's bat. After one last look at Lucille, Negan burns down their home and kills for the first time when he brings down his blood-thirsty "vampire bat" on the Vipers.

"Here's Negan" ends with Negan moving on from Lucille — both his wife and his bat — but will the real Lucille return in later flashbacks?

"Dude, who f-cking knows?! (laughs). It's The Walking Dead," Burton Morgan told Interview Magazine. "I was just so flattered that they invited me to begin with. I know Angela [Kang, showrunner] as my husband's boss, a cool person to hang out with. She'd come to the farm before the pandemic hit. She was the last guest we had at the farm. And so, her and [Walking Dead Universe chief content officer] Scott Gimple believing in me to be able to handle that really meant a lot."

The Walking Dead's Final Season premieres this summer on AMC. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD.