"The Walking Dead" checked in with Morgan on Sunday night's episode, as he shared his story in the hopes of changing another man's life.
The cliffhangers involving Glenn (is he dead? Did he make it?) and Rick (the RV won't start and there's a herd surrounding him!) were left, well, hanging, as the show focused in on Morgan as he tried to reason with the wolf he captured inside a home at Alexandria following the siege.
"You said that you want everything that I have -- every last bit? Well here it is. Every. Last. Bit," Morgan (Lennie James) said to the bound wolf (Benedict Samuel), before the show revealed what happened to Morgan in the time before he came to Alexandria.
Here's how things played out in "The Walking Dead" Season 6, Episode 4 – "Here's Not Here":
It's some point after Season 3's "Clear" episode, and a determined, but still unhinged Morgan is running through the woods taking down walkers, after having to leave his shelter due to a fire. With a real energy, he attacks and kills them before putting their lifeless corpses into a pile he burns. When he completes his task, Morgan writes "Clear" on whatever surface he can find.
But it's not just walkers he clears. Two men trail him in the woods, but Morgan gets the better of them, shoving the stick he's refined into a killing weapon into the neck of one man. The other, he strangles.
All alone, Morgan takes shelter in a ring of sharpened stakes that spear walkers that come near his makeshift camp. As he prepares to go out on his next mission a short while later, he walks past words he's written in walker blood on trees: "Here's Not Here," "Pointless Acts" and "Clear."
Drenched in blood, he's quite a sight when he stumbles into a lovely oasis in this post-apocalypse horror-fest – a field with tall grass and flowers. "Baaaaaaaaa," he hears. It's a goat nearby, tied up in front of a well-kept cabin with solar panels on its roof.
"Can you step away from the goat? I still need her. I haven't figured out how to make cheese," a man says from a hidden spot. Morgan fires in the direction of the sound, and moves in. The standoff, though, ends in the stranger's favor, as he knocks Morgan out.
Lennie James as Morgan in 'The Walking Dead' Season 6, Episode 4 (AMC)
Sometime later, Morgan wakes up inside a cage, freshly cut tomatoes, veggie patties and some orange juice at his side. "What's your name?" the man asks. "Kill me," Morgan responds. "That's a stupid name, you should change it," the man, who introduces himself as Eastman (John Carroll Lynch), says, before chucking "The Art of Peace" into Morgan's cell.
As night falls, Eastman comes back bringing Tabitha the goat into the same room as the caged Morgan. "You shot at me, I fed you. Please don't hurt her. Goodnight," Eastman says, leaving the two alone, and creating a little trust with his captive.
The next day, Eastman comes by for a chat. Before the world changed, Eastman was a forensic psychiatrist and the state employed him to figure out if prisoners could be let back into the world. "I clear," Morgan replies when Eastman asks what he does. "Walkers, people. Anything that comes near me, I kill 'em," Morgan continues. Eastman asks why. "Because that's why I'm still here," Morgan responds. "That's the biggest load of horsesh*t I ever heard," the man laughs, before giving Morgan his lunch through a slot at the bottom of the cage.
As their time together continues, Eastman deduces that Morgan was married, and had a child. His guard up over the accidental reveal, Morgan threatens to kill his captor, but Eastman doesn't buy it. Out of all the prisoners he interviewed back then – more than 800 – only one was evil. People aren't equipped to kill, Eastman says. As a further sign of his trust in humanity, Eastman reveals Morgan isn't actually locked in the cage. "The door's open, it's been open all along. You stay or you go. Those are the choices. I will not allow you to kill me," Eastman says. But, when Morgan opens the door and attacks him, Eastman's forced to fight. Using his special martial arts skills, Eastman gets the better of Morgan, who gives up and goes back inside the unlocked cage.
"It was Aikido. That's how I kicked your a** earlier. Well, that's how I redirected your a**," Eastman says, before explaining how a rabbit's foot (which Morgan had in Season 4) his 5-year-old daughter gave him helped lead him to learn Aikido. And with that, Eastman opens up a little more – he needs Morgan's help for a trip he plans to go on. "To where?" Morgan asks. "I have absolutely no idea," Eastman answers mysteriously.
As dawn breaks, Eastman asks Morgan to look after Tabitha while he gets supplies. Morgan doesn't, instead picking up "The Art of Peace," reading an inscription inside -- its do not kill philosophy. Outside, though, Morgan hears the goat crying so he runs out and saves her from two walkers. As he drags away one of the corpses to clear it, Morgan finds a makeshift graveyard. Eastman doesn't burn the bodies of walkers he puts down. He buries them.
"Thank you," Eastman says when he comes back as he watches Morgan dig graves for the walkers. Beyond burying them, to give them some dignity, Eastman finds the names of the dead in their wallets and makes them each wooden headstones.
As their bond grows, Eastman becomes Morgan's tutor, teaching him Aikido on the bank of a river. The passing of time is marked by the two reciting their Aikido code to each other. It's about moving forward, accepting what they were, accepting everyone, protecting everyone and "in doing that," protecting themselves, and creating peace.
There's more of Eastman's past to share too at night when Morgan asks about why he has a prison cell in the cabin. A prisoner Eastman evaluated on his job – Crighton Dallas Wilton – was a true psychopath. The day the prisoner realized that Eastman would do everything he could to stop the man from getting parole, Crighton snapped and attacked him. He used Aikido to defend himself and save his own life, and the incident ended with Crighton sent back down. Eventually though, Crighton made friends with the right people, and while working outside of the prison walls one day, he escaped, found Eastman's family and killed them all before turning himself in.
"I built that cell with the full intention of bringing Crighton Dallas Wilton here, putting him behind those bars and watching him starve to death," Eastman tells Morgan. When Morgan asks if he did, Eastman replies, "I've come to believe that all life is precious."
Later, as the two head out to find supplies, Eastman gets Morgan to open up about his own late wife Jenny and his son Dwayne, Morgan saying their names for the first time in a while. It's such an emotional moment for him that he can't snap out of it. "Forms, right here," Eastman says to try and get Morgan back on track. "You're gonna hold a baby again," Eastman says, patting Morgan on his shoulder. After they bow to each other, Eastman tells Morgan to take care of the walker headed toward him, but when Morgan sees it’s the man he strangled (earlier in the episode) he freezes. Eastman jumps in to save his friend, but is bit in the chaos.
The two men head back to the cabin separately. When Morgan arrives back, though, Tabitha is dead, being feasted on by a walker. Heading over to the graveyard, Morgan finds Eastman, who is burying the walker who bit him. As Morgan walks over to Eastman, he passes a gravesite reading, "Crighton Dallas Wilton."
"I put him in that cell, and I let him starve to death. It took 47 days. And then… I was gone. I was where you were, and I wasn't trying to open up the door anymore either. What I did to him, it didn't give me any peace. I found my peace when I decided to never kill again, to never kill anything again. When I decided to settle things, I went back to Atlanta to turn myself in, that's how I found out the world ended," Eastman reveals. "The world hasn't ended," Morgan responds. "Progress," Eastman replies.
"Everything is about people – everything in this life that's worth a damn," Eastman tells Morgan, encouraging him not to stay at the cabin after he's gone. He gives Morgan his daughter's rabbit foot before they part ways for good.
Morgan practices Aikido on the bank the next morning by himself. Later, he puts on his backpack and heads out, past the graveyard, which now has a wooden headstone reading "Eastman."
And then, the show cuts back to present day Alexandria. "You think it can work out that way with me?" the wolf, who just finished hearing Morgan's story, asks. "Yes, I think it can," Morgan says. But the man suggests otherwise. He's been cut badly. He came to Alexandria for medicine he hoped he'd find behind those secure walls he saw in Aaron's photos. "I know I'm probably going to die, but if I don't, I am going to have to kill you Morgan. I'm going to have to kill every person here, every one of them. The children too. Just like your friend Eastman's children. Those are the rules. That's my code," the man says.
Morgan stands up, anger in his eyes, and heads out, doing nothing to the man. But unlike what Eastman, he actually locks the man inside the Alexandria cell.
"Open the gate!" someone outside screams, as Morgan hits the street of Alexandria. He runs in the voice's direction.
"The Walking Dead" continues Sundays at 9 PM ET/PT on AMC.
