Lance Hornsby is a major supporting character in the final season of The Walking Dead. He worked under Pamela Milton as the Deputy Governor of the Commonwealth. Dissatisfied with Pamela's leadership, Lance aspired to take over governorship of the Commonwealth himself and expand it across the whole of the former United States.
History[]
Background[]
Lance's family had been serving the Miltons even before the apocalypse. His father initially served as Pamela's chauffeur and thus Lance knew Pamela since childhood. In the midst of the Fall, Lance helped to found the Commonwealth, becoming the Deputy Governor and the Director of Operations. However, he was often sidelined by Pamela and not given credit for his accomplishments, leaving him with ambition to take power for himself.
Seizing an opportunity[]
Nearly a decade into the apocalypse, it was discovered that someone was illegally communicating with an outside community. Although Lance failed to identify the culprit, he dispatched troops to the planned meeting location where they captured and interrogated Eugene Porter, Ezekiel Sutton, Yumiko Okumura and Juanita Sanchez. After discovering that her long-lost brother Tomi was in the Commonwealth, Yumiko applies for expedited processing into the Commonwealth which is ultimately granted. Seeing Eugene as the weak link and identifying him as the person at the other end of the radio, Lance seized the opportunity and had one of his spies, Shira, pose as "Stephanie," the woman that Eugene was talking to in order to manipulate Eugene into revealing more information about his communities.
During the start of the group's time in the Commonwealth, Lance presented himself as an ally to them, getting them out of trouble after they snuck into the radio room to communicate with Alexandria and arranging for Ezekiel to receive medical treatment for his thyroid cancer. After Eugene assaulted Sebastian Milton, Lance took the chance to leverage Eugene's freedom for the information that he truly wanted, a ploy that was successful. Eugene led Lance and the Commonwealth Army to Alexandria which had been nearly destroyed by the Whisperers and left in dire straits. Lance addressed the people and offered the Commonwealth's help in rebuilding the town and residency in the Commonwealth itself for anyone that wanted it.
Over the next several months, Lance dedicated his efforts into building a relationship with Alexandria, the Hilltop and Oceanside, pouring a great deal of resources into rebuilding Alexandria. During this time, Carol Peletier approached Lance with a deal to do work for him using her unique talents if he would get Ezekiel moved up the list to get the surgery to remove his cancer. Lance accepted the deal and, after Carol helped him with a rogue farmer named Moto, arranged for Ezekiel to have the surgery, saving his life.
However, things started to go badly for Lance's plans when Pamela accompanied him on a tour of the communities. Maggie Rhee was hesitant to accept the deal despite the dire state of the Hilltop, knowing that there will always be a cost and Oceanside intended to follow her lead with only Alexandria being committed to the trade deal. Lance opened up to Maggie, revealing that he saw the communities as the start of an expansion of the Commonwealth, a way to rebuild society. However, Maggie declined the deal in the end followed by Oceanside. Pamela agreed to let Lance continue his efforts with the communities, recognizing his ambition, but warned Lance not to get too far ahead of himself. Lance let out his aggression and frustration by putting down walkers and told Aaron that Pamela was on board, vowing to bring even more people in and remake the world.
True colours exposed[]
During this time, having gotten what he truly wanted, Lance had Shira end her charade. However, this aroused Eugene's suspicions that there was a rogue element in the Commonwealth which he believed had targeted "Stephanie." Eugene's investigation led him to discover that Lance was the head of this rogue element, seeking power for himself. Lance revealed the truth about Shira's deception to a devastated Eugene and shamed and manipulated Eugene into keeping quiet about his discoveries.
Emboldened, Lance began accelerating his plans, which included moving a secret weapons shipment disguised as supplies for Alexandria's rebuilding efforts. However, the soldiers guarding it were killed and the shipment was stolen. Suspecting that a community called Riverbend was responsible, Lance assigned a first contact mission and attached Gabriel and Aaron to it. In secret, Lance assigned Toby Carlson, a former CIA assassin, to eliminate the residents of Riverbend and recover the guns, sending a number of soldiers to help him. Things went awry as the Riverbend residents were actually innocent and Gabriel and Aaron managed to escape. Negan, now a resident of Riverbend, sent one of Lance's envoys, Jesse, to the Hilltop to ask for Maggie's help. Although Jesse was killed, he managed to relay the distress message. With the help of Maggie, Lydia, Elijah, Aaron, Gabriel, Negan and his wife Annie, Toby and his forces were wiped out, although not before they massacred most of Riverbend's residents. In the aftermath, Aaron and Gabriel covered the incident up as Riverbend and Lance's forces killing each other. Suspicious and determined to find the Riverbend survivors and his shipment, Lance forced an inspection of the Hilltop which Daryl convinced Maggie to allow. Lance's aggression towards Riverbend and the Hilltop fully exposed his true colours for the first time to everyone. When Lance couldn't find anything, he even went as far as to intimidate Maggie's son Hershel, leading to a standoff after Daryl and Maggie pulled guns on Lance and forced him to leave.
Power grab[]
With his plans falling apart, Lance made an open grab for power over the communities. After learning that Leah Shaw was responsible for the weapons' theft and was looking for revenge against Maggie, Lance hired her as an assassin to kill Maggie and provided her with men as support while simultaneously assigning more of his soldiers to kill Daryl, Aaron and Gabriel. However, the group anticipated Lance's move and killed his men while Maggie, Elijah, Lydia and Marco lay a trap at the Hilltop, killing several more of his men, much to his frustration and rage as Leah had purposefully sacrificed them to spring the trap. Leah killed Marco and abducted Maggie, but Daryl rescued Maggie and killed his former lover. As Lance and his forces approached Leah's cabin, Daryl shot at Lance, but only succeeded in grazing his face.
Enraged at his injury and the failures, Lance ordered his men to seize all three communities by force. In Oceanside, Lance sadistically flipped his lucky coin to determine whether or not the residents would be massacred, and it is left unclear what their ultimate fates were. Only Luke Abrams and Jules Butler managed to escape, having been away on a scavenging run when the invasion happened.
Lance began hunting for Daryl's group through an abandoned town while assigning Shira and Roman Calhoun to go after Daryl's adopted kids in an effort to draw them out. Daryl and Negan ambushed Lance and his soldiers, killing several and wounding Lance in the arm. Stealing a vehicle, Negan made his way to the Commonwealth to warn the others of Lance's actions and enlist Pamela Milton's help in stopping him. Daryl's group managed to lure Lance's forces into the sewers, but they ended up in a standoff with Daryl holding a knife to Lance's throat and Lance's men holding everyone else at gunpoint. However, Carol and Negan arrived with Pamela and General Mercer who ordered Lance's troops to stand down. Pamela and Mercer kept Daryl from killing Lance as Pamela needed him alive to pin her son's crimes on. After Carol urged Daryl to comply, he allowed Pamela to arrest Lance, but stabbed him through the hand first as a form of vengeance.
Imprisonment[]
Despite his arrest and defeat, Lance remained smug, convinced that Pamela still needed him, going so far as to threaten to expose "certain alliances." However, Pamela told Lance that he truly had gone too far and would be tried for treason against the Commonwealth. As part of her deal with Carol, Pamela agreed to return the communities that Lance had seized control of.
While imprisoned, Lance was visited by Eugene and Max Mercer who sought his advice in what to do against the Miltons' corrupt rule. Lance pointed out that despite Sebastian's crimes being exposed, the Miltons still held power and now had the Commonwealth singing their praises. Lance suggested that Eugene and Max needed to burn down the whole corrupt system to succeed. He subsequently arranged for Shira and Roman to murder ten Commonwealth janitors and leave them to reanimate and attack the Founders' Day celebration to prove a point to Pamela that Daryl and the others were dangerous, and that she needed him. However, Lance's actions had the unintended consequence of causing Sebastian's death, Sebastian having tried to feed Max to one of the walkers in revenge for her exposing him and then having the walker accidentally shoved into him by Eugene.
Having never intended for Sebastian to die, Lance expressed his remorse and Pamela decided his fate with a flip of his lucky coin. While Lance's life was spared, Pamela had had Roman executed and brought both his corpse and a zombified Sebastian into Lance's cell. Providing a horrified Lance with a machete, Pamela ordered him to cut up the corpse and feed it to her son.
Escape and death[]
Shortly after sending Sebastian to Lance's cell, Pamela had all of the Coalition residents kidnapped and disappeared like she and Lance had done with hundreds of other people in the past. Daryl and Carol managed to escape and reluctantly realized that Lance was the only one who could help them find their missing friends. As a result, they broke into the jail, only to find Sebastian amongst Roman's dismembered remains and a traumatized Lance in the corner staring at his lucky coin and muttering to himself "There's always a way out". Daryl put Sebastian down and the two demanded that Lance tell them how to find their friends. Lance agreed to lead them to the others and Daryl stayed behind to cover Lance and Carol's escape. Before leaving, Lance smashed Sebastian's head open and left his lucky coin behind in Sebastian's spilled brains as a calling card for Pamela.
As he traveled with Carol, Lance expressed his respect for both her and Daryl, claiming that his previous actions were a mistake and that the man who had done them died back in the prison cell. Lance was aware that Carol and her friends were likely to eventually overthrow Pamela and pointed out the logistical problems that came with such a revolution, offering his own ideas for reform and clearly angling to be a part of what came next. Lance helped Carol dodge a patrol, but they encountered a herd of walkers in a tunnel which Lance left Carol to fight alone, afterwards claiming that he thought that Carol was right behind him. Encountering more soldiers on the other end, Lance and Carol were saved by the timely arrival of Daryl who eliminated the soldiers.
Lance eventually led Daryl and Carol to a hill overlooking a train depot. He revealed that the missing Coalition members were being used as forced labour to help expand the Commonwealth's influence across the continent and that there was a supply train that they could follow to the others. Fed up with Lance's manipulations and no longer needing his help, Daryl and Carol attempted to exile Lance for his crimes, noting that it was more than he deserved after all the terrible things he had done. Lance continued to insist that he was not the same person anymore and that he could help them both with rescuing their friends and rebuilding the Commonwealth into something new. However, neither Daryl nor Carol were interested in Lance's words and ordered him to go. Lance admitted to his lack of survival experience and said that he would die out in the wild, but this garnered him no sympathy. Instead, Lance grabbed a rifle from the group's stolen Jeep and turns it on them, prompting Carol to shoot him in the neck with an arrow. With barely a glance at their fallen enemy, Daryl and Carol drove off, leaving Lance to die as he choked on his own blood.
Reanimation[]
Since his brain was left undamaged, Lance would inevitably reanimate. In the series' final episode "Rest in Peace", he appeared among a large horde of walkers that attacked the Commonwealth. With her control over the Commonwealth broken, Pamela Milton decided to feed herself to Lance rather than face the justice of the people, but Lance was then shot and put down by Maggie Rhee.