Fear The Walking Dead – What’s Your Story?

By starrymag | April 22, 2018

By: Tara Donahue

 

 

The crossover event we’ve all waited for finally arrived with the Season Four premiere of “Fear the Walking Dead.” If you were hoping to find out what happened to the Clark family and company, it looks like we’ll be waiting longer still to learn their fate. This episode was all about the journey of Morgan Jones (Lennie James) from Virginia over to the Fear universe, which we learn is in Texas now.

 

We open on a new face, a man we learn later is named John (Garret Dillahunt). He’s sitting by a campfire, reading a book and eating candy. He looks like a Wild West gunslinger type. A sound in trees pulls his attention from his book and he calls out, wondering if it’s one of the “passed” as he calls them. It turns out John has been on his own for quite some time and just wants someone to talk to. A zombie shambles out of the trees and John pulls out his revolver and shoots it, revealing Morgan standing there behind it about to kill it himself. “So, what’s your story?” John asks as it goes to the opening credits.

 

It comes back to Morgan, earlier in time, at the garbage dump where Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) and her people were living. As we saw at the end of “The Walking Dead’s” Season 8 finale, this is where he is staying now. He wants to be away from everyone. Of course, they can’t leave him alone. His first visitor is Jesus (Tom Payne), followed by Carol (Melissa McBride) and finally Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) himself.  They all try to talk him into coming back to the group, but Morgan isn’t interested. He just wants to be left alone. “You can hide, but you can’t run,” Rick tells him more than once.

 

Morgan decides he’s had enough. He packs his stuff and leaves. He runs. It looks like Rick was wrong and that he can run. Actually, he hotwires a car that luckily is on a full tank and drives until it’s empty. Then, we get a montage of Morgan’s journey, mostly through his feet, as he makes his way as far away from Virginia and everyone there as he can get.

 

We follow his trek until he is there, in the woods, just after John shoots the zombie. Our gunslinger introduces himself as John Dorie saying, “Like the fish, except i-e instead of y.” He offers to cook for Morgan, if he’s hungry. He’s got beans and…beans. But Morgan isn’t interested. After finding out Morgan is from back East, John asks if he’s seen a woman in his travels carrying a pistol identical to his. But, he hasn’t seen her.

 

John offers his truck to allow Morgan to sleep under a cover where it will be safer and Morgan tries to, but he can’t sleep. So, he slips away while his new friend is asleep in the cab. He finds an open tent with a lantern. Someone sneaks up behind him and knocks him out.

 

Morgan awakens to find himself in quite a predicament. He has a gun in his face and two other men surrounding him, one holding his staff. He tells them to keep the food, give him back the rest and he’ll be on his way. He tells them he doesn’t know anyone, but that turns out to be a lie when John shows up with his gun to save him. But Morgan isn’t the only one with a friend as there are others who come out of hiding and they’re both surrounded and are forced to surrender.

 

A SWAT truck approaches. It seems the driver, Althea (Maggie Grace), heard shots and came to check things out. Leland (Clint James) tells her to keep driving, but she’s not leaving. She offers some noodles and cigarettes before pulling a lever above her rearview mirror that reveals two big automatic weapons beneath a panel in the side of the truck. It looks like Morgan and John have just been rescued.

 

But Althea didn’t save them out of the goodness of her heart. They owe her. She is a journalist and she just wants their story. Once they’ve pulled over and found some safety, she pulls out her camera and John starts telling his story about a woman named Laura that he’s looking for. It seems she’s his lady love and they’ve been split up in some not so happy story. He’s hoping to find her though.

 

Now it’s Morgan’s turn, but he is not interested in telling his story or answering any questions. Althea again tells him he owes her, but Morgan doesn’t want to talk. She tries to ask him a few questions, but he puts on his backpack and starts to leave. John goes after him, but not to stop him, just to give him some clean socks. That’s when they spot a truck in the near distance. It turns out Leland has followed them and he’s not alone. They want the truck.

 

Leland is on Althea and his men disarm John and demand Morgan drop his staff. Clearly, they don’t know how good he is with it, which he proceeds to show them by knocking them down. John grabs his gun and manages to take down a couple of them, pulling open a mobile home door to dodge bullets and releasing all the infected that were inside.

 

A fight ensues and Morgan is on the roof of one of the trailers, trying to get to one of Leland’s last remaining minions. He gets shot in the leg, but it doesn’t stop him. As the guy is reloading his weapon, Morgan makes his move. As the man is hanging off the roof, the infected grabbing at his legs. Instead of letting him die, Morgan pulls him back up and receives a punch in the face for his good deed. They crash through the roof into the trailer full of infected, with the guy quickly ripped apart. Morgan manages to pin one against the wall who has grenades attached to his vest. He tosses a grenade and dives into the bathtub in the bathroom as it goes off.

 

Outside, Althea has thrown the keys and Leland gets bit by a snake while he’s trying to get them before the infected move in on him. This gives her time to move to the lever, which she pulls. Morgan and John hit the dirt as the guns take down the horde of infected surrounding them.

 

Back on the road, John asks about the flag Althea grabbed from the trailer park with the number 51 on it. She says they’ve been popping up around there the last few weeks but no answers on where they came from.

 

Morgan tells Althea to pull over as he’s ready to give her his story. Or at least some of it. He tells her his name and where he’s come from. He speaks about Alexandria and The Kingdom that actually had a king with a pet tiger. He speaks vaguely about a fight with a big group and how they won. Then he left. Mentally before physically, he admits. But as Althea presses further, wanting to know why he left, Morgan tries to turn the questions on her instead. He wants to know where she got the truck and why asking questions of strangers is so important. But he isn’t actually interested in the answers since he just wants to deflect, which is obvious as he gets up again to leave. He thanks them for their help. Althea asks him to tell her one real thing and they’ll call it even. She wants to know why he left Virginia to which he answers, “I lose people and I lose myself.”

 

He leaves and as he’s walking he sees a walker in the near distance, walking away from a Jeep Cherokee. It’s the same vehicle that Morgan encountered a shivering man in earlier, suffering from a wound on his leg. He’d tried to help the man, telling him he looked like he was on his own. But the man refused, arguing that “we’re always alone.” Now the man is dead and turned. Morgan tries to catch up to him, two other walkers behind him as he struggles to walk thanks to the gunshot wound in his leg, before falling to the ground. The zombies are about to overwhelm him, but John comes to the rescue, dispatching them with a knife. He tells Morgan he was wrong about being on his own and helps him to his feet, finally helping him catch up to the zombie man. He kills him and buries him before joining John and Althea in the truck again.

 

They’re glad they found him, but Morgan says he’s just traveling with them until his leg heals. Althea is taking John to try and find Laura in exchange for more of his story. John doesn’t know if he’ll find his love, but he doesn’t think that far ahead as it doesn’t do him any good. He recognizes it as truth and truth is something you can’t get around.

 

Ahead they see a girl walking in the middle of the road and decide to stop and help her. As they approach, the girl has collapsed and is crying. As Althea reaches her, the girl looks up and we see it’s Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), looking dirty and disheveled. “There are bad people,” she tells Althea. “There are bad people here.” Before Althea can react, Alicia pulls a sharp weapon and holds it to her throat. John and Morgan have no time to react before they are surrounded themselves when Strand (Colman Domingo), Luciana (Danay Garcia) and Nick (Frank Dillane) ambush them with weapons.  “So, what the hell’s your story?” Althea asks Alicia as the episode ends.