No more “clearing.” The latest episode of The Walking Dead was just the break we all needed to calm down over whether or not Glenn is actually dead. Fingers crossed for the latter, right? That pause just happened to be a trip down memory lane with our favorite Rick bestie, Morgan. We learn how Morgan became so centered after all he has been through, and more importantly who helped him to get to that state of being on The Walking Dead: “Here’s Not Here.” Spoiler alert.
Clearing
Last week on The Walking Dead, we didn’t see Morgan at all as the episode focused on what was happening with Rick’s group, who you may recall was trying to detour a group of walkers away from Alexandria. Morgan was nowhere in sight because he had already gone back to the community, just in time to help Carol and Eric deal with a Wolves invasion. This week’s episode picked up right where we last left off with Morgan.
As the episode begins, Morgan is talking to someone—unseen—who is apparently requesting to know how he became who he is. Strange question aside, especially when you find out who was asking the question by the end of the episode, it was a great setup for the unfolding that was Morgan’s life right before arriving at Alexandria…and it wasn’t pretty either. Basically, Morgan was a mess—clearing pretty much anything in his path—and that’s putting it lightly. Understandably so, the poor guy had lost both his wife and son during the whole zombie apocalypse thing. What made it worse was that he witnessed it. As one could imagine, it would be hard to come back from that sanity wise, especially without any help to do so. Enter Eastman.
Aikido
On one fateful day—and to be honest, just before Morgan was about to permanently lose his last marble—he stumbled upon a cabin in the woods with a goat out front. Not to worry, this is a good cabin in the woods story. After Morgan tried, and failed, to overtake the then unnamed owner of the cabin, he was knocked unconscious. When Morgan woke up he was in a cage. But before we could all jump to really crazy conclusions about the sanity and intentions of his captor, we realized that the cabin owner, who introduced himself as Eastman, had placed both a plate of food—vegetarian cuisine—and a bucket, presumably to get rid of the food, in the cage with Morgan. Not the kind of thing a psycho killer would do, right? Maybe. By the time Morgan fully came to, Eastman attempted to make small talk, but Morgan wasn’t having any of it. He was still very much in a state of resistance. Again, understandably so given everything he had been through. He was damaged, or as Eastman (a former forensic psychiatrist) diagnosed him, suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. Yep, that sounds about right.
Over time, Eastman began to win the trust and respect of Morgan; although, Morgan never, ever told him his actual name. He smart-ass answered that his name was “kill me,” when he first came to, but even when they got on good footing, interestingly enough he still failed to divulge his actual name to his new friend/therapist. Eastman even came clean about the fact that the cage Morgan was in wasn’t even locked, and he could easily leave out at any time. That’s when Eastman offered Morgan the opportunity to stay and crash on his couch or leave, but warned Morgan he would not allow him to kill him. Of course, Morgan still tested his hospitable host and charged him as soon as he exited the cage. He got his you-know-what handed to him, but that’s when he also learned about Aikido, the Japanese form of self-defense and martial arts that was the focus of the book Eastman gave Morgan on his first night in his cabin, but Morgan never touched. At that point, Morgan began to read about and practice Aikido with Eastman and even began to enjoy Eastman’s company. Eastman then began to open about his own personal story, a story of pain and coming back from his own bit of post traumatic stress disorder.
All Life is Precious
Eastman revealed to Morgan that he wasn’t always so peaceful of mind and felt that all life is precious. There was a time when he too was angry and wanted revenge. He then went on to tell the story of why the cage was built and about the one truly evil man that he has ever known, Crighton Dallas Wilton. Crighton was one of the inmates that Eastman had to evaluate during his days of working for the state of Georgia, and when Crighton was sure that Eastman could see right through his act of charm and would end up spending the rest of his days in prison as a result, he sought out revenge in the form of murdering Eastman’s entire family, only to return to prison to turn himself in. Crazy, right?
As Morgan listened attentively, waiting for the ball to drop, Eastman held on tightly to the most gripping part of the story: that it wasn’t just a fantasy for him to bring Crighton back to the cabin, put him in the cage and watch him starve to death. See, the thing is, he actually did that, which he later told Morgan about as he was facing his own mortality—thanks to a walker bite while out scavenging for supplies with Morgan. Shortly after burying Eastman, Morgan left the cabin, as Eastman urged him to do, and resumed his solo journey amid the apocalypse as a new man, one that accepted everyone, protected everyone—even Father Gabriel, ha!—and created peace. He now felt all life was precious, which brought us back to present day.
We finally saw who Morgan was telling his story to, one of the Wolves that invaded Alexandria. And true to his new self, instead of killing the man in front of him who was vowing to kill everyone in Alexandria once he had the opportunity, Morgan simply walked away, leaving him alone in the basement of a house. Morgan’s centered “do no unnecessary harm” attitude is all great and everything, but something tells me he is really going to regret his decision…and probably soon.
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9:00pm EST on AMC.