WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Walking Dead Season 10, Episode 22, “Here’s Negan,” which aired Sunday on AMC.
After being banished by Carol in the latest episode of The Walking Dead, Negan has a lot of time to think and is haunted by his former personality, who convinces him to dig up Lucille, his infamous baseball bat, which triggers some painful memories. “Here’s Negan” explores those memories as it tells the story of Negan and his wife, Lucille, whose death transformed a regular man into a callous killer.
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Negan has always been one of the most ruthless villains on The Walking Dead. It all began when he sadistically and brutally murdered Abraham and Glenn in “The Last Day on Earth,” giving off the impression that he behaved with the air of a villain who needed no introduction. Now, however, The Walking Dead has decided to address Negan’s backstory for the first time.
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Before the apocalypse, Negan was not a great husband and was constantly leaving Lucille alone. After a bar fight, Negan lost his job, which left Lucille responsible for financially supporting both of them. On top of that, he was a two-timer, and on one particular occasion, he couldn’t be bothered to pick his wife up from the hospital because he was having a fling with one of her friends. However, when he found out that Lucille had cancer, Negan, for a time, became the husband that Lucille had always wanted. When the apocalypse started, Negan even found a way to continue his wife’s chemo treatments at home. However, one fateful night, the couple forgot to turn the generator on, which ruined all of Lucille’s medical supplies.
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At that point, Lucille, who was not doing well, knew that her time was up. Negan, however, would not give up. He wanted to go in search of a group of wandering doctors, which prompted Lucille to reveal she knew about his affair and that he had completely made up for it. She pleaded with him to stay, but Negan refused to listen and left her alone. Six weeks later, after trouble with the dead and a biker gang, Negan finally returned home with the medical supplies, only to find that his wife had committed suicide. In fact, she had killed herself on the same day that Negan left and wrote him a note, saying, “Please don’t leave me like this.”
After the shock of his wife’s death, Negan, who had never killed anyone, returned to the biker gang and slaughtered all of them as revenge for their having delayed him. Before he took out their leader with his newly acquired baseball bat, he even told him that there were no consequences anymore. After losing his wife, Negan seemingly vowed to himself that he would never again be put in a position where he could be threatened or not provide security for those around him. So, he started to dominate others, and from there, he spiraled into a selfish egomaniac.
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Back in the present, Negan burns his bat, and in the process, he takes a moment to actually say goodbye and apologize to his wife. “I am sorry that I left you. I was a coward. I couldn’t face the pain of losing you, so I ran away. And then I made myself not feel anything because I didn’t want to feel the shame,” he said. Negan was apologizing for abandoning his wife to die alone and the pain that he caused her, both emotionally and physically, because he finally understood that he didn’t need to save her — he should’ve just been there for her.
Negan was also apologizing for the man he became after Lucille died. He realized that he was wrong and that he didn’t need to be this savior who provided for everyone. In the end, all he needs to do is be part of a community that’s building itself up to face the dangers of the world. That’s why he returns to Alexandria at the end of the episode, even though Maggie appears ready to kill him.
The Walking Dead stars Norman Reedus, Melissa McBride, Lauren Cohan, Josh McDermitt, Christian Serratos, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Seth Gilliam, Ross Marquand, Khary Payton and Cooper Andrews. The series airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and is available to stream early on AMC+.
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