A man (Garret Dillahunt) sits at a fire alone, reading a book, when he hears a stick break in a tree line nearby. He calls out and begins talking to whoever is out there. It’s clear he’s been alone for some time. He talks for quite a while without getting any kind of response.
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The man hears a walker in the distance and quickly takes out his pistol and shoots it right between the eyes. The walker falls to reveal Morgan Jones standing behind it.
“So, what’s your story?” the man asks Morgan.
Opening Titles
Morgan is back in Jadis’ junk yard, clearly before his encounter with the stranger. As he hangs clothes up on a line to dry, someone knocks on the doors at the entrance to the heap; it’s Jesus.
Once inside, Jesus sits down across from Morgan and tries to convince him to come back to the group, rather than living out on his own.
“The reason we fought because you want to protect people. You care about people. You should be with them.”
Alone once again, Morgan receives another knock. This time it’s Carol.
“Come back to the Kingdom. You helped me, you did. Let me help you. I don’t wanna tell you what to do, but you know who I am and I know who you are. You belong with people who care about you.”
Carol leaves and Morgan is by himself once more, cooking something on a small stove. Rick is the next visitor.
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you,” Rick tells Morgan. “I wouldn’t. I was hurt, you brought me in. You didn’t have to. Morgan you don’t have a gunshot in your side but, you are hurt. Come back with me. Don’t wait this time. Don’t waste one more second. You’re alive. You’re a part of the world. A lot of people are here now because you helped me right at the beginning.”
Morgan finally responds by saying that’s not who he is anymore, but Rick disagrees. Rick tells his friend, “You will be with people, one way or another.”
Morgan won’t come back. Rick tells him “You can hide, but you can’t run.”
Rick leaves and the wheels start turning in Morgan’s head. He packs up his things and leaves the junkyard, stick in hand.
Away from Alexandria and the Communities
Walking down an empty road, Morgan comes to a crossroads and begins hearing the voices of his friends in his head. Time passes, day becomes night, night becomes day again.
“You know what it is,” Morgan mutters to himself. He finally gets up, looks around, and begins running down the road.
In an abandoned town, Morgan finds an empty car full of gas and gives it a jump start. The camera immediately cuts to the car on empty in a completely different location, Morgan beginning to walk again. He sees a group of people but goes the other way. It’s unclear how long he’s been walking.
Morgan eventually comes up on another town, overrun with walkers. He examines an SUV and finds someone lying in the backseat, injured but alive. Morgan starts leaving medical supplies with the man but he’s told to “Take it back.” The man tells Morgan that everyone is always on their own, and asks him to leave. Morgan does as he’s told, picking up the supplies and heading off on his own once again.
Some time later it becomes night and Morgan is in the woods. He sees a walker and then hears the man from the fire talking in the distance. Morgan runs up to the walker to kill it and try saving the man’s life. The gun takes down the walker and we’re back to where we were at the beginning of the episode.
“So what’s your story?”
The man introduces himself as John Dorie and tells Morgan to come sit with him, offering him some food. Morgan declines the offer and stays at a distance. He tells John that he ran from “Back East.” John asks him if he met a woman that had a pistol identical to his.
“I’ve been looking for her for some time.”
“I haven’t seen anybody like that.”
As Morgan begins to leave, John insists that he stay there for the night, staying safe at least until morning. In the middle of the night, while John is sleeping, Morgan gets out of the truck and begins walking again. He comes across an abandoned camp site and starts to get into a tent, just before he gets hit in the back of the head and knocked unconscious.
Commercial Break
Morgan wakes up to a gun in his face. A few men are going through his things and questioning him. He tells the men that he’s just passing through and they can keep the food if they’ll let him go. They’re afraid he’ll tell someone about the campsite trap they set up.
“I don’t know anybody here,” Morgan tells them. “I don’t wanna know anybody here.”
Suddenly, the man pointing the gun at Morgan is shot in the hand. John comes out from the shadows and says he wants to help “his friend,” referring to Morgan.
“We have friends too,” one of the men says, as more armed men appear behind John.
Now both Morgan and John are being help captive when an enormous truck appears. The window rolls down to reveal Al (Maggie Grace) who says she just came by because she heard the shots.
“New people. I like new people,” Al tells the men. She offers to trade food and cigarettes to the men if they’ll give up John and Morgan. She pulls a lever in her truck to reveal two enormous guns coming out of the side.
Al drives down the road with John and Morgan in the back. Morgan wants to get out but Al says no.
“Sorry, I didn’t rescue guys out of the goodness of my heart. You guys owe me.”
The truck pulls into a trailer park and Al gets out a camera. She wants to ask John and Morgan questions “for a story.” She’s a journalist and wants to learn about the men.
The next morning, Al tapes John as she asks him questions, and he once again brings up the woman who he’s been looking for. Laura is her name. He’s confident that he’ll find her at some point. Al finishes her interview with John and turns the camera over the Morgan.
“What does it matter, these questions?” Morgan asks. “There aren’t any news stations left.”
Morgan doesn’t want to talk but Al is persistent. Morgan starts to leave the park but he’s chased down by John. Morgan makes it clear that he wants to be on his own and John respects that. He just wanted to give him a new pair of socks. The duo notice a truck parked at the entrance to the camp.
The men from the night before begin appearing all over the park, pulling guns on John, Morgan, and Al.
Commercial Break
The men make it clear that they want Al to give over her armored truck. They remove the gun from John’s hip but when they got for Morgan’s stick, a fight breaks out. John gets his gun back and and accidentally opens one of the trailers. It’s full of walkers.
One of the men goes to retrieve Al’s truck keys and gets bitten by a rattlesnake. The man shooting from on top of the trailers catches Morgan in the leg but it doesn’t stop him. The two fight and the man almost falls down onto a group of walkers. Morgan helps the man, who thanks him by attacking him once more.
Both of them fall through the trailer’s roof and the man is devoured by the walkers inside. Morgan manages to stick a grenade inside a walker and hide before it goes off.
The trailer explodes, along with the walkers inside it.
Commercial Break
Al goes to get into her truck but there is one man left; the one who went for the keys. They were the wrong ones, and he tries to force Al to give him the real ones. John saves her by shooting the man in the shoulder, who screams as he’s taken over by walkers. Al gets in the truck and tells John and Morgan to duck before pulling the lever and raining bullets down on the horde. She mows down every single walker in the park.
On the road, John notices a white flag with the number 51 spray-painted on it lying in the back of the truck. It’s the same flag that was flying back at the trailer park.
Al says the flags have been popping up all around over the last few weeks, marking something. But she isn’t sure exactly what they’re for because no one has been alive for her to ask.
The truck pulls over, Al gets her camera out, and she finally gets to interview Morgan. He opens up about his past in both Atlanta and Virginia. Al asks him to elaborate about the settlements he lived in. Morgan talks a bit about Alexandria and The Kingdom, which had “a king and a pet tiger.”
“They were safe places, good people inside. I had been with some of them for a while.”
“What happened?”
“There was a fight with another group. It was a big, big group, We won.”
“But you didn’t stay?”
“I had already left, before I left.”
“I don’t understand. Did they do something? Or did you?”
After that question, Morgan started to shut down a little bit. He turned it around on Al.
“How about you tell me about you? Like, how did you get this van? Why asking total strangers questions like this is so important to you?”
Morgan thanks both Al and John and begins to leave. Al stops him.
“Tell me one real thing, then we’ll call it even. Why’d you leave Virginia?”
“I lose people and then I lose myself.”
With that, Morgan turns and walks down the road, by himself once again.
Commercial Break
Morgan is walking down the road with a limp from the gunshot he suffered at the park. The bandages that he tried to give away to the man in the SUV are now wrapped around his leg.
He stops when he sees that man’s SUV on the side of the road ahead. No one is in the vehicle this time. The man’s makeshift bed in the backseat is empty.
In the distance, Morgan sees the man walking away. He starts going after him when a few walkers appear from the tall grass nearby. Morgan struggles to get away and falls due to his injury. When the walkers get close to attacking him, John appears and kills them both. He helps Morgan up and tells him that he’s wrong in thinking that people need to be on their own.
Morgan “needs to know” about the walker up ahead, the man from the SUV. John helps him catch up. After seeing that it is in fact the same man, and that he’s turned to a walker, Morgan kills him. He buries the body off in the dirt.
Now, Morgan is again riding in the truck with John and Al, though he says he’s only staying with them until his leg heals up. John says that they are going out to look for Laura. In exchange for the help, he’ll tell Al more of his story.
The trio comes up on a woman walking in the middle of the road. They pull up to the woman and stop the car, arming themselves before investigating. Morgan refuses to take a gun and tells Al, “I don’t kill.” John says he tries not to either.
All three travelers get out of the truck and approach the woman, who has fallen to the ground. She’s struggling to breathe, it sounds like. Morgan goes back to the truck to get the first aid kit. When Al and John reach the woman she looks up at them.
It’s Alicia Clark. She says there are “bad people here.”
Suddenly, Alicia attacks Al and several armed people pop out of the grass. Luciana, Nick, and Strand all appear, telling Morgan and John to drop their weapons.
With Alicia’s knife at her throat, Al looks around at everybody in the road.
“So, what’s your story?”
The End.
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Image Credit: Marvel Studios
