‘The Walking Dead’ Casts Jeffery Dean Morgan’s Wife Hilarie Burton as Negan’s Wife Lucille

Just a year after tying the knot, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Hilarie Burton will be taking their love to the small screen on AMC’s The Walking Dead. The series, which aired its Season 10 finale in October, has cast Burton as Negan’s wife Lucille in one of the additional six episodes coming to AMC early next year.

The casting was first confirmed by the network to Comicbook.com on Tuesday. Burton is set to appear in the bonus episodes as a “guest star,” AMC confirmed, taking on the role of Lucille, a character who also appeared in Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comics. As the outlet reports, Lucille was Negan’s wife prior to the zombie apocalypse. Their marriage, however, was not traditional, as Negan had been having an affair, which Lucille knew about, though he broke it off in order to spend as much time with his wife as possible after she was diagnosed with cancer. Lucille died just as the zombie outbreak struck, and in the years that followed, and as witnessed on the show, Negan named his baseball bat, wrapped in barbed wire, after his wife.

At this time, it is unclear just how much of that comic book storyline the bonus episode will cover. The six additional episodes, which do not yet have a premiere date but are currently filming, will be an anthology format, focusing on individual characters or small groups of characters with each new episode. They were confirmed to be in the works after the Season 10 finale was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The six additional episodes will mark some of the final episodes of the series, which AMC confirmed in September will be coming to an end after the 24-episode Season 11, to air during the fall of 2021 and the beginning of 2022.

That final season will not mark the end of the TWD universe, though, as two additional spinoff series – joining the original spinoff, Fear The Walking Dead, and the October-debuting spinoff The Walking Dead: World Beyond – are in the works. The first of those series, an untitled project, is set to follow Daryl Dixon and Carol Peletier and is expected to premiere in 2022. The second new spinoff, titled Tales of the Walking Dead, will serve as an anthology and focus on new or existing characters. That series does not have a tentative premiere date.

New episodes of Fear the Walking Dead air Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on AMC, followed by The Walking Dead: World Beyond at 10 p.m. The Walking Dead will return with six new episodes in the Spring. Stay tuned to PopCulture.com for the latest updates.