The Walking Dead Just Revealed The Origins Of Negan's Baseball Bat
Contains spoilers for The Walking Dead season 10, episode 22 — "Here's Negan"
When it comes to weaponry on The Walking Dead, often survivors are forced to use whatever they can get their hands on to defend themselves. However, there are a few characters who have found a weapon that suits them so well that it becomes a part of them. Michonne (Danai Gurira) has her katana, Daryl (Norman Reedus) has his crossbow, and, of course, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) has his barbed wire-covered baseball bat, Lucille.
The appearance of Lucille alone is enough to strike fear in both the hearts of fans of The Walking Dead and anyone unfortunate enough to stray into Savior territory. After all, Negan doesn't just use his menacing weapon, named for his late wife, to beat back walkers. In the now-infamous season 7 premiere, he uses it to brutally murder Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Abraham (Michael Cudlitz). This act of cruelty helped make Lucille as synonymous with Negan's reign of terror as his smirk and leather jacket.
In the season 10C finale, "Here's Negan," viewers got an intimate deep dive into the man himself. Through a series of flashbacks, we got an insight into his life before society collapsed, his relationship with Lucille (Hilarie Burton Morgan), and how he transformed from a high school PE teacher into a ruthless gang leader. The episode also showed exactly how Negan came to be in possession of his trusty baseball bat, and the significance it played in his early-apocalypse life.
Lucille the baseball bat was born from tragedy and blood
A significant portion of the flashbacks in "Here's Negan" revolve around the eponymous character's quest to find chemotherapy drugs for his wife Lucille, who is undergoing the difficult task of battling cancer in the apocalypse. This leads him to attempt a robbery on a mobile medical clinic by holding up the staff with what turns out to be an empty gun.
Negan's would-be mugging isn't a success. He's swiftly knocked out with a baseball bat and subdued. But thankfully for him, the clinic staff — Franklin (Miles Mussenden) and Laura (Lindsley Register) — are more interested in helping people than harming them. After hearing Negan's story, they give him the meds he needs and send him on his way.
Before they do, Laura, who goes on to become one of the Saviors, gives Negan the baseball bat so he has something to protect himself from the gangs who patrol the roads near the mobile clinic. Negan is clearly entranced by the bat from the beginning, but it's not until tragedy strikes that the weapon truly becomes Lucille.
After getting captured and held up by a gang trying to extort the mobile clinic for their valuable drugs, Negan finally returns home, only to find that his wife Lucille is dead. Devastated and furious, Negan wraps his baseball bat in barbed wire and returns to the gang hideout. He goes on a rampage, wiping out the members one by one and giving his newly acquired weapon its first taste of blood.
It's really then that Lucille, the fearsome symbol of Negan's power, is born.