Morgan slowly comes into focus.
‘You said you liked talking, I remember that. Like the movies, talking by the fire. You want everything I have.’ He’s talking to, or about a wolf. ‘Well, here it is, every last bit.’
Flames in a lantern, radio and gun. Morgan is sleeping on a cot, then gets up and walks around. He’s back in the days of ‘Clear’. Lantern is now a fire. ‘You were supposed to! We weren’t supposed to be here.’ The lantern flame is now a huge fire!
Back in the woods, and we see Morgan in a police helmet and machine gun. He’s like a swat guy. He kills walkers right and left. He drags them all into a pile like wood and then torches them. Now there’s a big bonfire of walkers. He sits by the fire and watches them burn. More walkers come up and he dispatches them and adds them to the fire. The walkers approach in onesies and twosies. A flaming walker comes out of the bonfire, but no matter – Morgan smacks him back down.
Dawn. He kills anther walker and adds him to the fire, but doesn’t burn him. Morgan gets some water, and goes back into the woods and hunts. Then back to his campfire. He marks his area as ‘clear’. He writes this in blood on a big stone.
Back to hunting in the woods. He’s being stalked by two men. They track him, but he’s been tracking them too, and he kills them both. He tells the one that he kills slowly that ‘you know you don’t.’ Back to night and a new bonfire. He probably added them to the fire.
More of his booby traps like from ‘Clear’ – impaling them on posts. We see various stones marked with his sayings – ‘here’s not here’, ‘clear’, ‘pointless acts’.
Now he’s in a meadow, rays of sun, some flowers amongst the green. Very pretty. He’s standing in the middle with his staff, and he’s muttering to himself. ‘You know what it is’. He swings it in the air. He picks up his gun and his staff, and sees a fence with cans designed to make noise. He sees a house with solar panels and a goat. He looks inside the fence and jumps over it. A man tells Morgan to step away from the goat. Morgan shoots at someone. The man tells him to put down the gun and they can talk. Morgan looks suspicious. He peers inside and sees a table inside a neat room.
Someone can clearly see Morgan but we can’t. Morgan skulks around. ‘Okay, last chance. Lower your gun.’ Morgan continues to skulk around. And then he gets whacked. The guy in white has his own staff and says to Morgan ‘sorry’ before he knocks him out, just like Morgan said to the wolf last week.
Morgan wakes up in a cell. There is food (nicely arranged) and a drink for him. The captor walks in. He asks Morgan his name, and Morgan says ‘kill me’. The guy says ‘that’s a stupid name. You should change it.’ He walks up to Morgan and gives him a book- ‘The Art of Peace’. He says his name is Eastman.
Eastman goes outside and kills a walker before it can kill his goat. He does his household work while Morgan sits in his cell being crazy. As they get ready for night, he says ‘I fed you, please don’t hurt her’ (the goat). I think the goat’s name is Tabitha.
In the morning he watches Eastman kill a walker and generally go about his business of making a living for himself. Eastman is making something – maybe cheese, but it’s terrible and he gags. He works with the staff showing off moves that we’ve seen Morgan use in Alexandria. He tells Morgan he’s from Atlanta and was a forensic psychologist before the end of the world. He asks Morgan what he does. Morgan says he ‘clears’ – walkers and people. ‘Why?’ asks Eastman. ‘Because that’s why I’m still here,’ Morgan replies. Eastman doesn’t believe him, and he serves Morgan lunch.
Morgan is futzing with a zipper, making something sharp. He’s going to file down the bars in the window so that he can escape. He removes a board that holds the bars, not the bars themselves. Eastman comes back so Morgan puts the board back. He tells Morgan that Morgan has PTSD.
Morgan tells Eastman that he killed a lot of people, even though they weren’t threatening anyone. Eastman asks Morgan if he had people he cared about? Kids? He tells Morgan that he saw it happen, didn’t he? He describes PTSD for Morgan – what he has.
Morgan tells Eastman he has to kill Eastman so that he can clear him. Eastman says that we get PTSD because we’re not made to kill. It’s just not a normal thing for us.
Eastman then tells Morgan that the cell door is open and has been all along. Morgan can stay or go, but Morgan isn’t allowed to kill Eastman and Eastman won’t allow it. Morgan steps out of the door and attacks. Eastman warns Morgan to stop. Eastman has the upper hand and could kill Morgan at any time. They fight and grapple. Now Morgan has the upper hand, and then Eastman gets on top and has the upper hand. Again, he could kill him, but doesn’t. Morgan surrenders. Eastman picks up his staff and stands over him. He looks at the child’s picture on the wall, now destroyed in the fight, and looks upset. It probably belonged his son or daughter. He tells Morgan ‘I gave you two choices, the door or the couch.’ Morgan goes back into the cell. Eastman picks up the picture and opens the cell door again, and walks off.
Next time we see Morgan there is more food for him. Eastman tells Morgan that he used aikido on him and that’s how he won. He tells Morgan about his daughter who gave him a lucky rabbit’s foot.
He tells Morgan he needs help if they’re going to make this trip together. Morgan asks where they’re going, and the guy says he has no idea. And then he says good night.
Morgan gets up and goes out of the cell. He looks at the child’s drawing. It’s on plaster – the guy must have cut it from the wall.
Eastman says ‘where there’s life there’s potential.’ He tells Morgan that they should go out and scavenge while they’re out. Or at the very least can Morgan watch the goat while he’s gone? Nothing from Morgan. Eastman leaves. Morgan gets up and leans on the bars and watches him leave.
He looks back down on the book – “The Art of Peace’. Aikido means ‘not to kill’. They don’t even try to kill the most evil person. Morgan starts to mull. We hear a walker approach the goat. It sounds like the walker is going after the goat. Morgan attacks the walkers and kills them. He is unhurt as is the goat. It’s a start for him.
He lets the goat go, or maybe brings it into the house for safekeeping. He drags one of the walkers away. He sees a graveyard with little wooden quasi-crosses – more like Ts. It’s vast. He digs a grave. Looks like Eastman has been burying walkers since whenever he moved in. Now Morgan is digging graves too.
Eastman pulls a walker’s ID before burial and puts the ID in a tin. And then adds a notch on his staff. He tells Morgan that Morgan broke a fence and needs to fix it. And then he gives Morgan his own staff.
Dawn again, and we see the goat. The men working. Eastman tells Morgan about aikido and how it works. Redirect the thoughts and view all life as precious. Morgan reads the book and practices. They need to make up for all of the killing they’ve done, but to accept what they were. The goat is now in the cell and Morgan feeds it. They slowly build up trust. Protect others and therefore protect themselves. They create peace.
Eastman built this place with his wife. No cell in the house back then. He was interviewing Crighton, who was up for parole. The guy saw through him – Crighton was a psychopath. Eastman saw that he was evil, his mask had slipped. He knew the psycho was going to kill him. The guy got out and killed his wife, daughter and son. Crighton then went to the jail to turn himself in. He only broke out to make Eastman’s life miserable.
He built the cell in order to put Crighton inside and watch him starve to death. He’s come to believe that all life is precious. Did he kill him? And that’s why they’re having oatmeal burgers, says Eastman. Morgan said ‘you’re good at redirecting’. We don’t know yet whether or not Eastman killed Crighton – but we think he might have.
Eastman says ‘we need more gear’. He suggests going to the coast. Morgan knows where they can find a bunch of gear. They go to Morgan’s former cleared area with the burned bodies. Morgan pulls out a tarp and other items. He asks Morgan who he lost. Morgan says his wife and son. What were their names? Janet and Duane.
The guy says they need to practice right now, right here. They begin. Eastman puts Morgan in the correct position and has him hold the position. They bow to each other. A walker comes up. The guy tells Morgan ‘he’s all yours’. Morgan recognizes him as one of the guys he killed earlier in the episode, hm, I guess Morgan didn’t add him to the fire after all. Morgan is mesmerized by the walker – so much so that Eastman has to push Morgan out of the way. He turns his back for a moment and the walker bites him.
Morgan yells, ‘tell me how it is’. Eastman tells him they’re going home. Now they fight. Eastman still has the upper hand and Morgan yells ‘kill me’. Eastman puts down his staff and then places the dead walker in a cart and Morgan yells, ‘I told you not here.’ Eastman says, ‘that’s the thing, Morgan, here’s not here.’
Morgan is sharpening wooden spears in the woods. He sees a walker, he stalks it, and then kills it. He comes across two people who the walker was after. They leave Morgan some food and a bullet, thank him, and walk off. Morgan runs through the flower-filled field and goes back to the house. A walker is eating Tabitha the goat. Morgan kills the walker. He brings Tabitha to Eastman who is digging a grave – probably his own. He gives Eastman the ID of the last walker he killed. Morgan continues digging the grave for Eastman.
Morgan walks over and sees Crighton’s grave marker. Eastman comes up to Morgan and admits he killed Crighton. He put Crighton in the cell and let him starve to death. It took 47 days and then he was crazy like Morgan. Killing Crighton didn’t give Eastman any peace. He got peace when he decided not to kill anything again. He was on his way to turn himself in when he found out the world ended.
Eastman says that his daughter made the picture on the wall and he pulled it off. He walked through 30 miles of the dead. He tells Morgan he can stay at the house. He says everything is about people. Then Eastman tells Morgan he’s ready. He’s fading from the bite wound. He tells Morgan there’s a gun in the lock box. He gives Morgan the lucky rabbit’s foot. Morgan helps him into the other room to get the gun.
Dawn again. Morgan is alone practicing aikido. We then see him at the house as he gets ready to leave, backpack on his back, staff in hand. He goes to the graveyard. And we see that he has already buried Eastman. We see the empty woods with the sun shining through the trees. Morgan looks at the rabbit’s foot in his hand and begins to walk. He sees the sign to Terminus.
Then Morgan is talking to the wolf, in present time in Alexandria. He’s explained all of this to the wolf. The wolf says he’s shaking and sweating a little. He’s wounded, possibly bitten. He was hoping for medicine. He knows he’s going to die, but if he doesn’t, he’s going to kill Morgan and everyone else. He’s kind of like Crighton in that way – a psycho. Morgan stands up with his staff and walks out the door. He locks the wolf in. And then runs off.