When The Walking Dead returns next month, the season is expected to deal with the return of Morgan Jones, a character we have known since the pilot episode, but who we’ve only seen in a smattering of episodes so far. The season six trailer hints that Morgan’s rivalry may upset the balance of the group with Alexandria and perhaps even threaten Rick’s role as leader.
How that plays out remains to be seen, but before season six kicks off, we thought it would be worthwhile to look back at the relationship between Rick and Morgan to see how the past may inform the future of the series. And what it reveals is that, based on the mirrored events of the first two interactions between Rick and Morgan, it’s quite possible that Morgan has not shown up to Alexandria to hurt Rick. Rather, he’s there to save him.
Here are the key moments between Rick and Morgan through the first five seasons of the series, most of which can be reduced to their interactions in two episodes, the pilot and the third-season episode “Clear.”
Welcome To Oblivion
Morgan is actually the first person Rick saw after he woke up from his coma. Rick rushed from the hospital back to his own home to search for Lori and Carl. It was outside of his own house that Duane — Morgan’s son — hit Rick in the back of the head with a shovel, mistaking him for a walker. Before Rick passed out, he caught a glimpse of Morgan approaching, taking out a zombie on the way. Morgan demanded to know what kind of wound Rick had, holding a gun to his face. “What’s your wound. You tell me, or I will kill you,” Morgan said, worrying that Rick was a walker.
Needless to say, they didn’t meet on the best of terms.
When Rick woke up, however, Morgan had redressed his wounds, but his suspicions about Rick had not been allayed. He was concerned that Rick had been infected, so Morgan had tied Rick to the bed. Morgan demanded to know if Rick had been bit, but Rick — in a coma during the zombie outbreak — didn’t understand the line of questioning.
Over dinner that night, Morgan explained to Rick what was going on, and it was then that we first heard the term “walkers.”
“I guess if this is the first you’re hearing of it,” he told Rick, “I know how it must sound.”
Later that night, Rick, Morgan and Duane spotted Morgan’s wife — now a walker — through the window. “I should have put her down. I know that,” Morgan grieved. “I just didn’t have it in me.”
After the scare with Morgan’s wife, the next morning Rick and Morgan began to bond. Rick killed his first walker, returned to his home, and discovered that Lori and Carl had likely left alive. Afterwards, Rick took Morgan and Duane to the sheriff’s office, where Morgan and Duane took a shower, the best moment either had had in weeks.
After the shower, Rick loaded Morgan and Duane up with weapons from the sheriff’s office and asked Morgan to go with him to Atlanta. “In a few more days,” Morgan said, taking a walkie talkie from Rick, with which they could communicate. “You’re a good man, Rick. I hope you find your wife and son.”
Rick didn’t see him again until season three. Meanwhile, Morgan couldn’t find the strength to put his wife down.
Getting Clear
Morgan’s inability to kill his wife, however, would cost Morgan. He and Duane hung around King County, but one day while searching for food, Duane was bitten by his own walker mother. Morgan “saw red.” After the loss of both his wife and son, Morgan began to lose his mind.
That’s when Rick runs across him again, in “Clear.”
Rick returned to King County for weapons, but found none in the police station. They did, however, find a man wearing a helmet and got into a shootout with him. In the pilot episode, it was Morgan’s son who knocked Rick unconscious. In clear, it was Rick’s son, Carl, who shot Morgan, and Morgan fell and lost consciousness.
When Rick pulled off the helmet, he discovered who he was.
The reunion did not go well.
Rick had tied Morgan to a cot, just as Morgan had tied Rick to a bed in the pilot. But Morgan escaped. He didn’t recognize Rick and continued trying to kill him. Morgan stabbed Rick in the shoulder. Rick struggled free and turned the gun on Morgan. Morgan begged him to end his life. “Please kill me. Just kill me.”
Morgan did eventually recognize Rick, but Morgan was initially angry with Rick for never responding to his radio calls. Rick explained that he was too far out and could no longer hear them, but that didn’t calm Morgan. Morgan eventually confessed that it was his own weakness — his inability to kill his wife — that cost him his son.
A raging Morgan manically yelled at Rick, telling him that Carl would die, and that he would, too, because the “good people” die. And the “bad people” die. “But the weak people, the people like me, we have inherited the Earth.”
Rick tried to convince Morgan to come back with him to the prison, but Morgan refused. He didn’t want to go to the prison and get involved in another fight. “You will be torn apart by teeth or bullets, but not me. Because I am not going to watch that happen again,” he raged.
“You can come back from this. I know you can,” Rick told Morgan. “This can’t be it. It can’t be. You’ve gotta be able to come back from this!”
Morgan stayed behind. “I have to clear,” he said.
Before they left, however, Carl apologized to Morgan for shooting him. “Don’t you ever be sorry,” Morgan told him.
The Road To Someplace Else
I like to think that it was Rick’s impassioned “You can come back from this” speech that ultimately straightened Morgan out, that turned him into what he was when we saw him again in season five: A man capable of killing, but a man that was reluctant to do so because of a newfound appreciation for the preciousness of life. Morgan saves Daryl and Aaron from a boobie trap laid by the wolves and travels back to Alexandria with them. That’s when he sees Rick again. In fact, Morgan witnesses Rick kill Jessie’s husband. “Rick? Is that you?” Morgan asks, bewildered by the violence, by the blood on Rick’s face.
When Morgan sees Rick again, Morgan’s a changed man. Their first two meetings, in a way, mirrored each other. In the pilot, Morgan saved Rick’s life after Duane knocked him out, but Morgan also tied Rick to a bed to ensure his family’s safety. In “Clear,” Rick saved Morgan’s life after Carl knocked him out, but tied him up to ensure his family’s safety.
Morgan, however, had gone mad in “Clear.” Likewise, when Morgan meets Rick at the end of season five, Rick was on the precipice of madness himself, having demonstrated as much when he nearly killed Jessie’s abusive husband and pulled a gun on the citizens of Alexandria in the previous episode, an event that led the citizens of Alexandria to vote on whether to kick Rick out of the town.
At this point in Rick’s life, how different is he from Morgan at Morgan’s lowest point in “Clear”?
Many are predicting that Morgan’s arrival in Alexandria may bring about a schism between Rick and the rest of Alexandria, and that many of the citizens may take Morgan’s side in a Rick/Morgan rivalry. I’m not so sure that, based on their shared history, that there will be a rivalry between the two characters. In fact, I believe that Morgan may have been called upon to do for Rick what Rick had done for him: To break him from his spell of madness. Maybe Morgan can convince Rick that he “can come back from this” before Rick completely loses his way.