The Walking Dead season 10 reveals a first look at Hilarie Burton as Negan’s wife Lucille. After the epic events of this year’s delayed and somewhat reworked season 10 "finale," TWD is extending its tenth season with six bonus episodes featuring more self-contained, character-oriented stories (as the show scales back production while dealing with COVID protocols).
This run of bonus episodes is indeed set to start with a bang, with a story focusing on Maggie, who ends up coming face-to-face with her mortal enemy Negan. Another bonus episode will delve into what Daryl was up to in that mysterious span of time after Rick’s disappearance when he was alone in the woods with Dog. Still another episode sends Aaron and Gabriel on a mission together, while another catches up with Eugene and his group after they were captured in the finale (yes, Princess is back). But probably the most exciting of all the bonus episodes is the Negan-centered one, in which fans will finally get to see some of the former Big Bad’s backstory, with Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s real-life spouse Burton playing Negan’s late wife Lucille.
The first of the six bonus episodes is set to arrive on February 28, 2021, and now an in-production teaser has dropped affording fans a first glimpse of the action to come. The biggest reveal in the teaser is without a doubt a brief look at Lucille as played by Burton. There’s also a very brief glimpse of Maggie walking with a child who presumably is her and Glenn’s son Hershel Jr., as well as a quick look at Robert Patrick’s new character Mays, who figures into the Aaron/Gabriel episode. See the clip in the space below (via AMC The Walking Dead):
As fans of the Walking Dead comics well know, Negan’s wife Lucille passed away from pancreatic cancer just before the outbreak of the zombie plague, and Negan was further traumatized when his beloved wife turned into a zombie and he had to put her down. This horrific experience helped propel Negan toward becoming the villain he would later be, as he armed himself with a barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat dubbed Lucille. In the comics, Negan was eventually imprisoned by Rick and his group but later earned his freedom, finally renouncing his evil ways and disappearing into exile. Indeed, the recently released synopses for the bonus episodes teased that Negan could be headed on a similar trajectory on the show, as he “comes to a conclusion about his future.”
It remains to be seen what Negan’s future holds, but in the meantime AMC's zombie show will finally fulfill a lot of fans’ wishes by depicting his devastating backstory and allowing the real Lucille to have her moment as well. It will certainly be interesting to see how real-life couple Morgan and Burton interact as their fictional selves when The Walking Dead returns.
Source: AMC The Walking Dead/Instagram