WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead comic and (potentially) the television series.
When Negan was first introduced in The Walking Dead #100 and the sixth-season finale of the Walking Dead TV series, he arrived with a distinctive swagger, a blunt attitude, and a barb-wire wrapped baseball bat. Calling the weapon "Lucille", Negan quickly uses the bat to dispatch beloved characters and leave a major impression on audiences.
Now, CBR is taking a look back at the history of the baseball bat covered in barbed wire, how Negan claimed it and what happened to it.
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WHO IS THE REAL LUCILLE IN WALKING DEAD?
The first Lucille was Negan's wife. Although she's never appeared on the television series, she makes a brief appearance in the Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard's story "Here's Negan." Although Negan has been flippant in their marriage, he still loved her with all his heart. He had an affair with another woman but ended it when he learned Lucille had contracted cancer. Shortly before the dead rose around the world, she passed away peacefully in her sleep with her weeping husband by her side. But the world fell apart around them, and she came back as a Walker.
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Negan, despite managing to kill two Walkers who attacked him the halls of the hospital, couldn't bring himself to put down the thing that used to be his wife. Instead, a teenager Negan saved agrees to do it for him. The two bond, and Negan quickly becomes something of a mentor to the teen (who unfortunately doesn't make it very far). This is the moment Negan shifts internally and starts to transform into the man he would eventually become. Negan briefly worked with another group of survivors, but they were ambushed by Walkers and only Negan survived. He used a baseball bat one of the other men had lost to kill all the Walkers. When everything was finished, he took the bat with him.
WHO WAS KILLED BY LUCILLE?
Negan first used Lucille against another human in "Here's Negan." After working with a group of marauders, Negan is disgusted by one of them offering up a woman and implying Negan could have his way with her. He confronts the man and two get into a fight. Negan grabs the bat and beats him to death with it. Realizing how he'd need to harden himself to protect people, he wrapped barbed wire around the bat and called it "Lucille." He made a vow to let Lucille protect the others like it had "protected" him.
Negan usually used Lucille when he wanted to make a statement. Although Negan used it in battle against other humans on occasion, this usually led to the deaths of unnamed minor characters. The two biggest casualties of Lucille are Glenn in both versions of the series, and Abraham in the television series. When the main survivors are captured by Negan and his men, Negan announces that he'll have to kill someone to prove that he's serious. After playing "eeny-meanie-miney-mo" to select his victim, he lands on Abraham in the television series and Glenn in the comics. He proceeds to brutally beat them to death with Lucille. But when Daryl tries to attack Negan in the television series, Negan decides that his point hasn't been made yet, and he kills Glenn as well.
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While Lucille is his primary weapon, Negan has never been opposed to using his knife as well. He actually has more on-page and on-screen kills with it than Lucille. He uses a knife against Spencer, Henry, Brandon and most notably Alpha. However, Lucile is and always will be the main item associated with Negan, thanks to its iconic role in Glenn's death.
WHAT HAPPENED TO LUCILLE IN THE WALKING DEAD?
Following the death of his wife, Negan had to harden himself. After the first wave of allies he had died, he learned that he had to be hard to survive, something he tried to instill in all of the men and women who followed him. Lucille was more than just a weapon, it was how he defined himself. Eventually, it's taken from him by Dwight, which in part separates him from his darker impulses. It's during this time Negan learns how to be a member of the Alexandria survivors, rediscovers his humanity.
During "The Whisperer War," Dwight returns the bat to him so he can be the hard man again, but it shatters while fighting Beta, shocking Negan. When he's released into the wild, he tries to move on from the man he was. Eventually finding another baseball bat, he makes a second Lucille. But upon being confronted with the ramifications of his past (and Maggie holding him at gunpoint) and ultimately being spared by her, Negan decides to burn the bat and move on. This is actually the last time we've seen Negan, giving him a surprisingly hopeful ending of overcoming his need for Lucille. He doesn't need the bat to survive anymore, and he doesn't need it to be a cold and cruel man.
