Jeffrey Dean Morgan got his wish! On the most recent installment of The Walking Dead: Dead City, he got to act alongside a former TWD guest star that he said he’d “always wanted” to find a way to bring back again – his real-life wife, Hilarie Burton Morgan!
While Lucille has been a fixture in the franchise, particularly due to being the inspiration for the name of Negan's signature weapon, fans were first introduced to the real woman from the leather-clad baddie’s past in The Walking Dead season 10’s “Here’s Negan.” Based on the stand-alone comic of the same name, the episode flashed back to just before the dead walked as it explored Negan and Lucille’s rocky marriage and her battle with cancer that brought them closer together as the world began to collapse into turmoil.
Cutting back and forth between two timelines, Negan struggled to hold onto Lucille despite her failing health in the flashbacks as he learned to let go of his bat, and with it, perhaps some of the darker parts of who he was in the present.
"We've been trying to figure out a way to bring her back into the show since she came on the first time," Morgan said in a June 2025 interview with People. "I always wanted her back."
And they finally found a way to do it four years later in Dead City season 2’s “Novi Dan, Novi Pocetak.” Throughout the episode, Lucille was frequently on Negan’s mind as he fought to save Ginny’s (Mahina Napoleon) life after the teenager sustained a serious injury. Upon learning that there may be antibiotics in an abandoned hospital, he set out on his mission – but amid a run-in with kid Walkers, he hit his head and gradually began to hallucinate.
At one point, he chased after who he believed to be a hoodie-wearing thief stealing medicine, but when he tackled them, it was revealed to be none other than Lucille in her purple wig. Overcome with emotion, Negan apologized to her for not doing enough to save her life, but the figment of Lucille reassured him.
"You got me up in the morning. You washed me," she told him in the scene. “You got me dressed. You undressed me.”
“It wasn’t enough,” he replied through tears.
As for why the Grey’s Anatomy alum believes it's been important to include moments with Lucille in the show, he told the outlet, "I think that it does so much for my character having her around so you can see behind the door of why Negan is Negan.”