This article contains spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead season 8 and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.
With the sprawling world of AMC’s The Walking Dead ballooning to a franchise that includes sequels, prequels, and anthology series, it’s easy to forget the humble roots of the Frank Darabont days and Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) waking up in the Harrison Memorial Hospital. While it’s sometimes hard to keep track of the various branches of the Deadverse, few have continued the story as faithfully as Fear the Walking Dead.
Starting out as a prequel to the events of the main series, Fear the Walking Dead soon took on a life of its own and told an epic story across eight seasons. Now that the whole story saga is on Netflix, it’s time to look back at the highs and lows of the shuffling series and how Fear the Walking Dead repeated a deadly TWD mistake with one of the franchise’s best characters.
Up there with Norman Reedus’ Daryl Dixon and Melissa McBride’s Carol Peletier, Lennie James’ performance as Morgan Jones remains one of The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead’s biggest wins. Whereas comic book Morgan only made it to Issue #81, his live-action counterpart became a recurring character in The Walking Dead and eventually left in season 8 to become a mainstay of Fear the Walking Dead from season 4 onward. Being one of the lucky few to survive both shows, Fear frustratingly left Morgan’s fate in the air.
Alongside the return of Kim Dickens as pre-Morgan protagonist Madison Clark, James’ grizzly survivor was a major focus of Fear the Walking Dead’s final season. This made it even more surprising when he survived another brush with death, only to leave in the midseason finale to look for Rick. Remembering that Morgan hasn’t seen Rick in a decade by this point in the story, and the characters are miles apart, it was criticized as a lazy way to bring things full circle. Worse still, James is yet to return to the Deadverse, meaning he sat out the Rick-centric The Ones Who Live and didn’t even get so much as a radio cameo à la Carol in Daryl Dixon.
It’s fair to say that The Walking Dead tried to run before it could walk, meaning it wasn’t long before the close-knit cast of season 1 became a supersized ensemble that even Lost would be jealous of. This was good news for a series that had such a high death count, but with each season adding more characters than we care to count, it means some fan-favorites were cast to the side – never to be seen again. Sticking a major question mark over Morgan’s current whereabouts, he joins a long list of The Walking Dead characters whose fates are left up in the air.
Although Morgan’s final message to Rick says, “Man, I’m gonna come and look for you, whether you’re at Alexandria or not,” James seems happy to leave the story there. Speaking to CBR in 2023, the star explained, “This is it for me. He’s been around long enough.” Still, he admitted that he might be willing to “pick up the stick again” for an amazing storyline that takes the character in a different direction and does something that Morgan hasn’t in previous episodes. Echoing what many fans feel, James is worried that bringing Morgan back would “tarnish his legacy.”
Morgan at least got some form of sendoff, unlike Corey Hawkins’ Heath, who was last seen in season 7’s “Swear” and remains one of the show’s biggest plot holes. Showrunner Angela Kang confirmed to Business Insider the long-held theory that Jadis’ scavengers traded Heath with the CRM and that she hoped we’d see him again at some point in the TWD Universe. As that was in 2018 and The Ones Who Live seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring back Heath, it feels like even the most die-hard fans might not care anymore. In reality, Hawkins moved on from The Walking Dead and starred in projects like Kong: Skull Island and BlacKkKlansman.
It’s much the same for Fantastic Beast’s Dan Fogler’s Luke, playing a key role in the Whisperer arc before being parked in Oceanside and eventually brought back to die in the war for the Commonwealth. It can’t have been easy to juggle so many side characters, but chances are you’ve likely forgotten about Oceanside leader Cyndie (Sydney Park), and after appearing in 27 episodes, what happened to Scott (Kenric Green) following the season 10 finale? Still, when Lauren Cohan’s Maggie met with the mysterious Georgie (Jayne Atkinson) in season 8, only to have the latter replaced by the similar Pamela Milton (Laila Robins), there are too many instances of forgotten characters.
Fear the Walking Dead is also guilty of this. Qaletaqa Walker (Michael Greyeyes) was the primary antagonist for the first half of season 3 but was never seen again, Max, Annie, and the rest of the orphaned kids vanished between seasons 5 and 6, and showrunner Andrew Chambliss was forced to acknowledge the missing Jacob, Sarah, and Wendell, telling EW there simply wasn’t room for them in the finale. Maggie Grace’s Althea might’ve been hated by some, but are we supposed to assume she’s just living in Isabelle’s cabin indefinitely? Fear the Walking Dead then took things too far the other way, seemingly unable to let characters go in its final season by bringing back everyone from Madison to Troy (Daniel Sharman), Charlie (Alexa Nisenson) to Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey).
Despite the future of Rick and co. being up in the air after plans for a Grimes movie trilogy being canned, The Ones Who Live put the pieces in place for a reunion akin to Avengers: Endgame where we imagine everyone from Madison to Morgan somehow meeting with Rick. James at least seems more open to the idea of coming back in the aftermath of Fear the Walking Dead’s finale, musing what it would be like if Morgan and Rick met again and telling ComicBook.com in February 2024, “Every and anything is possible.”
Then again, given how The Walking Dead loves to live up to the ‘dead’ part of its name, Morgan should trust us that he’s probably safer where he is. For now, Morgan’s name is etched on the great wall of MIA characters alongside Eduardo, Kal, and Virgil – yep, we had to Google them as well.
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