The Walking Dead: Five Questions Raised in "Clear"

While there were some pretty solid moments in tonight's episode of AMC's The Walking Dead, it [...]

While there were some pretty solid moments in tonight's episode of AMC's The Walking Dead, it didn't leave us totally fulfilled. Warning: Some spoilers ahead for The Walking Dead comic books. As always, there are questions raised int he episode that won't play out until later in the season, later in the series...perhaps never. What the hell was going on in Rick's hometown? Is Morgan remembering things correctly? Read on... Where is the rest of Rick's town? Granted, most places we've seen so far in the series are pretty abandoned--but that's in part because there's nothing of value to scavenge there and damaged storefronts, burned-out buildings and the like make that pretty obvious. On the other hand, locales like the prison and Woodbury have come under near-constant attack or at least scrutiny. The fortified nature of Morgan's street is just begging for an audience, so why is there no one else in town? Is he killing everyone who comes near, or at least stripping them of their arms and shoes and sending them out to probably be gnawed to death by walkers, as he tried to do with Rick, Michonne and Carl? And if so, is that a reflection on the character that's similar to the way we're forced to see the consequences of Rick's decision not to help the hitchhiker? Did Morgan kill his wife? At one point in the episode, Morgan tells the story of how he lost his son--incapable of dispatching his zombie mother, Duane failed to defend himself and was consumed by the zombie. It's an parallel of what happened with Dale, when Carl couldn't take out a walker and it came back to the farm and launched the chaotic third act of season two. But then he says that the loss of Duane finally snapped him--that he saw only red, and destroyed what remained of his wife. So why do we doubt it? There's a woman in the diner--a walker that Carl takes out--that's got the same crazy hair and low neckline that Morgan's wife had. Neither the look nor the wardrobe are exactly right, but the camera hovered on her for longer than most of the other walkers taken out this week, and it made us wonder: were we supposed to "notice" that particular zombie? Will we see Morgan again? This one's pretty self-explanatory. After Daryl took off, we more or less predicted that we'd see him again pretty soon, with our prediction of a "Han Solo moment" being pretty on-the-money. But Daryl was and is a central member of the cast, and so it's pretty clear that we wouldn't be without him for long. There also wasn't really anywhere for him to go, without having to completely establish a new locale. He couldn't go to Woodbury, and didn't have a "home base" to fall back on like Morgan does. There's really no reason for Morgan to leave the relative comfort and safety of his home. So...will we see him again, and if so, when? If we had to guess, we'd say probably in the same way we saw him in the comics--as Rick and company leave the prison behind and work their way through town. Given what they know about the fortifications of the town, it would have to be a pretty welcoming place to hunker down and regroup if that last fight gets ugly. Does that final warning mean anything? You'll be torn apart by teeth or bullets, Morgan tells Rick. You, and your boy, too. There's been a lot of discussion about what to do with Chandler Riggs; he obviously ages faster than the chracter probably should and while they've been able to hide it so far, as the show becomes a bigger and bigger success the odds that they'll want a way to write him out (even though Carl is integral to the comics) just grows. And, with Lori already gone, the group is due for a big, emotional loss in that last face-off with the Governor if it plays out anything like the comics did. Could that warning be a foreshadowing of things to come in the future?

Is this the end of Michonne's "probationary period"? By the end of the episode, Michonne has sold herself on Carl and Carl seems to have changed Rick's mind about her. Could this be the start of a beautiful friendship? Certainly if she spends the rest of the season fearing that Rick could vote her off the island at any moment, there's little to keep her watching his back and little to stop her from running off and trying to take out the Governor on her own, just like she did the last time she had a chance. Her relationship with Rick is also solidified somewhat by their shared trauma and the similar ways they've reacted to it. We never saw Michonne get as terrified or angry at Rick's madness as some of the other characters, or flee like Tyreese and his group--and now we know why. Will that help later on?

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