The episode starts with Morgan talking to someone in the present and he says he'll tell him everything. So we then cut to a season 3 Morgan at his little hideout after his last encounter with Rick. He decides to leave and clears another patch or land and burns a pile of walkers. He sharpens a bunch of staffs and uses them to protect the perimeter. The next day or so he stumbles upon a couple of survivors (a father and a son) and Morgan stabs the the father in the neck and chokes the life out of the son.
A day or so later Morgan finds a cabin in the woods and shoots at the man who lives there who tries to talk him down. Morgan refuses and is knocked out by the mystery man. He awakens later on in a cage. The man who put him there is an aikido practicing vegetarian named Eastman. Morgan keeps asking the man to kill him, but he refuses and offer to feed him. A few days later he offers Morgan the couch or the door as the cage door was never locked. Morgan attempts to kill Eastman and breaks an important piece of art on the wall which angers Eastman, but he still spares Morgan and relays the same choices back to Morgan who elects to get back into the cage.
The two live together for a while and we learn Eastman was a criminal psychologist who saw the evil in a particular prisoner. He could tell that this one in particular was fooling everyone but him and as a result the prisoner attacks Eastman who subdues him. He later escapes from prison and murders Eastman's family and then turns himself in because all he wanted to do was ruin Eastman's life. Eastman trains Morgan how to use a jo and later they return Morgan's old camp. A walker comes out, the turned version of the person Morgan killed earlier and he freezes up. To save Morgan, Eastman pushes him out of the way, but is bit in the process.
Morgan nearly snaps again and Eastman subdues Morgan in a brief skirmish. Morgan resharpens his bo and stabs a walker who was chasing two wounded survivors. The survivors leave Morgan a can of food as an attempt to not kill him and when they see the good in him, they leave a bullet as well and they limp off.
Back at camp Eastman is digging graves because they bury the zombies there as well as normal people, Morgan sees the grave of the man who killed Eastman's family. Eastman then revealed that he captured the murderer and starved him to death which took 47 days. It didn't make him feel any better and the only thing that did was deciding not to kill anyone ever again. He found out about the apocalypse when he went to turn himself in only to find there was no one to turn himself in to. After burying Eastman Morgan sets out and runs into the train tracks that lead to Terminus.
Back in the present it is revealed that the person he's speaking to is the "Alpha wolf" as he's been credited the one he's fought with multiple times. He says that his code requires him to kill everyone in the Alexandria camp. Morgan locks him up and is called away. End of the episode.
This is the worst episode so far of the new season but it is a necessary one given the stark differences between the Morgan we've seen before and the one we see now, but also the differences between Rick and Morgan. Rick kills, Morgan doesn't, Rick doesn't bury the zombies, Morgan does. Rick doesn't try to convert people who tried to kill him. Morgan does and this seems to be a major point of contention.
It wasn't as bad as the snooze fest that were the Governor side episodes in the 1st half of season 4. My biggest gripe with the episode was actually the representation of Aikido. Being someone who has actually practiced the art, some of the points mentioned in there aren't really that accurate. Now there are many different styles of Aikido, some of which are more vicious than others so I'll let some of the philosophical points slide a bit, The most egregious part which I can not ignore is the weapons training which is completely inaccurate. Aikido does do work with a staff called a Jo, but many of the jo techniques are sword driven and none of the motions either Eastman or Morgan used are consistent with what is taught in Aikido. Morgan's work is more consistent with Donatello from TMNT.
Knowing how far ahead the Walking dead plans things they must have known last season that Morgan was going to have trained under an aikido teacher, so get someone who has actually practiced aikido to teach him! If you want a better representation of aikido in Cinema, watch a Steven Seagal Movie, just try not to laugh when he runs...
Those are my thoughts, feel free to comment below
C.J. Foxx
Author of Super-Hero Bowl VI
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