‘Fear the Walking Dead’: Morgan Helps Nick Find Peace

Jacob Bryant
TV The Walking Dead
TV The Walking Dead

SPOILER ALERT: Warning, this article contains spoilers from the Season 4, Episode 3 of Fear the Walking Dead. Proceed at your own risk.

There are a lot of parallels between Nick and the Morgan from three or four seasons ago in The Walking Dead. Both spent a chunk of time being a solo savage on in the open, both took it so far they lost themselves, and both tried to right the ship by going into a self-prescribed exile — the season started with Morgan locking himself up in Jadis’ junkyard and Nick on a long stint of refusing to leave The Diamond.

“You try to do the right thing, and you end up doing the worst,” Nick tells his mother Madison in a flashback to when the Vultures still had The Diamond under siege. He went out hoping to help his mom find food, and when a mustachioed Vulture – and Charlie, who continues to stab the group in the back – arrive at their spot and take the supplies before them. Nick nearly kills the man.

Morgan notices early that they’re kindred spirits. After Al’s botched escape that dumps the SWAT truck into a ditch, everyone but Nick and Morgan head off on a mission find something to pull it out – a mission that only amounts to the two groups earning a bit of good will from each other – and the two left begin to bond. Nick offers Morgan half a protein bar after seeing the man’s sweet skills with a staff, and he secretly sees Al’s tape of Morgan’s story. The bonding comes to a screeching halt when the two see a blue Camino drive by – the same the mustachioed Vulture drove in the flashback – and Nick takes off after it.

The two end up in a small town, and take cover in a drugstore. Nick confronts Morgan about why he doesn’t kill – because almost every character has to at this point. He already knows the answer – “I lose people, and then I lose myself” – because he watched Al’s tape, but it doesn’t stop him from prying.

“You don’t kill, but I bet you did,” he tells Morgan. Morgan tries to talk him out of finding the man in the Camino, but Nick takes off to look over the town. He eventually finds the car, and the Vulture from the flashback. The man is surprised to see Nick, but Morgan – who stumbled across the man first, and was trying to get him to leave – stops him from killing the Vulture. The man heads off and Nick tells Morgan the only way to stop him is to kill him, so Morgan lets him go and Nick gets himself some sweet, bloody revenge.

“I know where you are Nick, because I was there,” Morgan tells a blood-soaked Nick after he kills the man. He brings up his time with Eastman, and lets Nick take his Art of Peace book. Morgan seems ready to pay-it-forward the way Eastman did for him.

Nick wanders off to read the book, and pulls a blue bonnet – picked from a field him and Madison found where she told him to try to find something good every time they leave The Diamond – from his pocket. He looks at peace, and seems ready to let Morgan help him. And that’s when Charlie shows up and shoots him in the chest.

Yep, the show’s new direction seems hell-bent on brushing a lot of aspects of what made FTWD interesting for three seasons – different time period, visually unique setting, it’s characters – under the rug as quickly as possible. Charlie shot Nick for killing the Vulture and runs off just as the others arrive with the SWAT truck. He dies choking on his own blood surrounded by his sister Alicia, Luci, and Strand.

The last scene cuts from his bloodied, dead body to one of him laying in a field of blue bonnets. Maybe Morgan helped him find peace after all.

Some unanswered questions:

– How long ago was the Vulture’s siege on The Diamond? The guy Nick kills seems genuinely shocked to see him.

– Where is Madison? Dead? Taken by the Vultures?

– Hopefully this week’s episode wasn’t Frank Dillane — one of the original cast member’s — last. If the season continues with flashbacks, he should still be around.

– Was there some chemistry between John and Luci?

Jacob Bryant
Jacob Bryant is a writer-for-hire with a penchant for the gory and caped shows. He thinks Jericho is the greatest television achievement of all-time.