Lucille. The Walking Dead returns in February, continuing season 10 with a handful of episodes to tide fans over until production can resume at full strength to film season 11. These extended season 10 episodes will be smaller stories that focus on just a few characters rather than diving straight into the Commonwealth arc. One is exploring Negan's backstory and will introduce Lucille, his first wife and the namesake for the infamous barbed wire weapon.
Like Rick's six-shooter or Michonne's katana, Negan's baseball bat is his signature weapon. When introduced in The Walking Dead season 6 finale, Negan holds Lucille while he pontificates, and in the season 7 premiere, he uses her to murder both Glenn and Abraham. Negan loses the bat after Rick defeats him in the season 8 finale, and when in season 9 an imprisoned Negan asks Michonne if he can see Lucille, Michonne tells him the bat was left where he dropped it. That exact bat has yet to reappear on The Walking Dead, but season 10 did see Negan gain a replacement Lucille. In this season 10 episode, the origin for the first Lucille bat will be explored alongside Negan's, but a recent trailer hints Walking Dead may be changing exactly why he calls her Lucille.
In a new Negan means Lucille protected him from life's hardships rather than from any actual violence, but the TV show is going for a more literal interpretation. In showing Lucille actively protecting Negan from a walker by shooting it, the reason Negan names his new weapon Lucille becomes a lot more obvious.
By having Lucille survive for longer and experience at least the very earliest days of the outbreak, AMC's The Walking Dead is allowing her character more time to develop. As a result, the dynamic between Negan and Lucille is sure to be more thoroughly explored in the "Here's Negan" episode than it was in the comic. Already, teasing a scene where Lucille calmly puts down a walker while Negan struggles suggests she's the one who keeps her cool when things go awry. Negan alludes to this in the comics, as do her brief scenes battling cancer with a brave face, but even just this short scene glimpsed in a trailer reveals the more direct approach the TV show taking. It's also unlikely this scene will be the only instance of Lucille better handling their dire situation.
Though Lucille still dies from her cancer and her death is sure to still feature in the flashbacks scenes, Lucille's character will have been better represented on screen before she dies. Given this change, the reason Negan decides to name the bat Lucille is likely to stem from the ways she's shown protecting Negan and helping him survive in the early days of the outbreak, even as her health declines. When she's gone, Negan will need to find the strength to carry on without her, and one way he'll do that is by naming his new weapon after his late wife.