Ever since AMC announced that Lennie James’ Morgan Jones would be transitioning to from The Walking Dead to Fear the Walking Dead by the end of the season, the biggest question on the minds of The Walking Dead fans has been: Will Morgan die at the end of this season of The Walking Dead?
A recent image of the fourth season of Fear the Walking Dead seems to provide a definitive answer, but before we provide that answer, here’s the conundrum in a nutshell:
The timeline on Fear the Walking Dead is several years behind that of The Walking Dead. Therefore, there have been two main theories to explain how Morgan ends up on Fear the Walking Dead: 1) That Morgan will die at the end of this season of The Walking Dead, but Morgan’s appearance on Fear the Walking Dead would take place during those long stretches of time during the first four seasons that we didn’t see Morgan. In other words, either in between the time of the pilot and the third season episode “Clear,” or between “Clear” and when Morgan meets Eastman, the cheese maker. Or 2) that Fear the Walking Dead would time jump several years into the current The Walking Dead timeline, meaning that Morgan won’t die at the end of this season. He’ll simply leave Alexandria and eventually connect with the Fear the Walking Dead characters in Texas in the current timeline.
We can now say definitely which of those theories is correct.
How? Well, we can account for Morgan’s whereabouts after he met Eastman. After Eastman died, Morgan left his property and immediately saw a sign for Terminus that had only been changed by Rick a few weeks prior. At that point, Morgan began tracking Rick’s group from Terminus to Father Gabriel’s old church, where Morgan found a map to Washington D.C. He took that map and eventually hiked all the way to D.C., where he met one of the Wolves and eventually rescued Daryl and Aaron and followed them back to Alexandria. His time in Alexandria takes him up through the current timeline.
In other words, while we can’t account for all of Morgan’s time between the first and the fifth season, we can account for all of this his time from the fifth season and beyond, after he met Eastman. So if we know that Fear the Walking Dead takes place after Morgan met Eastman, then we know that there will be a significant time jump into the present on Fear the Walking Dead.
These two images from the fourth season of Fear the Walking Dead provide definitive proof that Fear the Walking Dead takes place after he met Eastman.
See what he is carrying in both of those photos from the upcoming season of Fear the Walking Dead? He’s carrying his staff. That wooden stick. But Morgan didn’t carry that wooden stick until Eastman taught him how to use the staff. Before Eastman knocked him out with his staff, Morgan carried a gun.
Eastman is the one who taught Morgan how to use a staff. Because we know where Morgan has been since he began using the staff, the events of Fear the Walking Dead necessarily must take place beyond season eight of The Walking Dead, ergo Morgan will not die on The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead will have a massive time jump into the present The Walking Dead timeline.
We should see how this all plays out when The Walking Dead returns in February and Fear the Walking Dead returns in April.
