Lennie James on Morgan’s Final Fear the Walking Dead Episode (Exclusive)

[This story contains spoilers from the Fear the Walking Dead midseason finale.] “I don’t die. Everybody else does, but I don’t.” The words that Morgan Jones (Lennie James) carried over from The Walking Dead proved prophetic on Sunday’s “All I See Is Red” episode of Fear the Walking Dead, where Morgan made his exit — but did not die. After finally laying his walker wife Jenny and his zombified boy Duane to rest back in King County, Morgan thought he was past having to “clear.” But then Morgan lost Grace (Karen David) to a walker’s bite and their daughter Mo (Zoey Merchant) to PADRE. Trapped in a cycle he thought he’d broken, Morgan’s mantra repeated itself: “I lose people, and then I lose myself.” 

“It’s like I see red. It’s all I see, and all I do is kill. Again and again. Until I’ve cleared. Walkers, people, I don’t see no difference. All I see is red,” Morgan told Madison Clark (Kim Dickens), who lost herself when she kidnapped baby Mo and took her to PADRE seven years earlier. But he helped bring her back, so Morgan’s last episode sent him into zombie-infested swamps with Madison to rescue his child, sent by Shrike (Maya Eshet) to clear a walker herd and retrieve coordinates PADRE needed to seed new settlements across the country.

Morgan’s fear of losing Mo made him see red, and in his maddened mental state, he saw flashes of the people he’s lost: his mentor Eastman, who taught him Aikido and that “all life is precious.” Benjamin of the Kingdom. Mo’s birth parents, Isaac and Rachel. John Dorie and John Dorie Sr. Nick and Alicia Clark. Grace. Jenny and Duane. After he endangered his daughter when walkers swamped them on the sinking houseboat where they ended up while escaping PADRE seven years ago, Morgan eventually broke the cycle when Madison told him: “You never really lose people, Morgan. None of us do.”

By letting go and breaking free from the cycle, Morgan didn’t lose Mo — or himself. In the end, Morgan’s journey on Fear the Walking Dead came full circle: he left with Mo to return to the Alexandria Safe-Zone and find Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln). It was Rick who sent Morgan off from The Walking Dead to Fear the Walking Dead with the words, “You can hide, but you can’t run.”

While it was Rick who brought Morgan back from Fear, James will not be crossing over to another Walking Dead spin-off: the actor is hanging up the stick and laying Morgan to rest as he departs the Walking Dead Universe after 13 years. ComicBook spoke to James about Morgan’s ending, if the door is open for a potential Morgan and Rick reunion, and why James’ Walking Dead future is clear.

COMICBOOK: Morgan Jones doesn’t die.

LENNIE JAMES: Well, on this one, there’s two ways to go. Either you die or you don’t [laughs].

Just to be clear — this is your exit from Fear the Walking Dead. We won’t be seeing Morgan in the final six episodes?

LENNIE JAMES: You will not.

You’re tying up 13 years of threads from Morgan’s series journey on The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead. Why was midway through Fear‘s final season the right time to leave?

LENNIE JAMES: I think it’s just the way the story panned out for the final season. I mean, on one level, you’ll have to ask [showrunners] Andrew [Chambliss] and Ian [Goldberg] that question. I think it was to do with timings, when was best for the story they wanted to tell in the final season and in a way, to dedicate a chunk of the first six episodes to Morgan’s story and then continue as they mean to go on.

[Walking Dead Universe chief content officer and executive producer] Scott M. Gimple put Morgan on this trajectory in The Walking Dead‘s “Clear” episode a decade ago. How collaborative was the process between you, Andrew, Ian, and Scott coming up with Morgan’s ending for this episode?

LENNIE JAMES: I think everybody had an input. I mean, that’s pretty much been how the process has been all the way along. There are different stages in which you find out what the creators, what Scott has in mind for your character. And you get to, or at least we do, we get to voice an opinion at different stages. Sometimes, as with all of us, sometimes those discussions change. Sometimes things stay the same. It truly is one of the things I’ve enjoyed most about being in The Walking Dead Universe is that collaborative process. And you’re absolutely right in the sense of my character’s link and bond with Scott. I mean, I think until I came over to Fear and some of, most of, if not all of, Morgan’s pivotal episodes on The Walking Dead were written by Scott.

You mentioned things change along the way. Was there ever an alternate ending in mind for Morgan? Because this is Walking Dead, one where Morgan dies?

LENNIE JAMES: From the moment we started seeing scripts, the ending was as the ending is.

The episode ends with Morgan leaving to look for Rick Grimes. As he says, it wouldn’t be the first time they found their way back to each other. Is there an open door there for Morgan to return to The Walking Dead Universe and reunite with Rick?

LENNIE JAMES: In all honesty, every and anything is possible. And I know it’s something that a certain percentage of our fans would like. I would show up to work with Andy again any time. But anybody who knows me knows I’m fiercely protective of Morgan’s story. And as far as I’m concerned, at this particular moment in time, this is the end of the road for Morgan. You’ll only see him again if a story comes up within the universe that is just too good to say no to.

“All I See Is Red” brings Morgan full-circle back to your very first episode of Fear the Walking Dead, where Morgan ran away from his people at Alexandria. Now he’s going back home to right his mistake. In your mind, what does Morgan and Mo’s feature look like?

LENNIE JAMES: That’s a very good question. I think they have a long way to walk. That’s the first stage of it. And we know that Morgan has done it once before, so he knows what’s ahead. I think on one level, as he did before, he’s walking into the unknown. He doesn’t know, should he come across Rick again, should he bump into Rick again, what state that he’s going to be in. What has happened to him over the years that they haven’t been in contact?

He’s also walking now with extra responsibility, but he’s also walking now as a man who has buried, literally buried, a lot of the ghosts and pressures that were haunting him. And he’s hopefully put them to rest. So wherever he ends up, one of the things I liked about this final chapter for Morgan is that, you are right, it is like a reverse of how we started in Fear the Walking Dead. But he’s certainly walking away a better man than he arrived.

Getting into the Morgan and the Mo of it all. There’s a line that Morgan’s mindset hooks on this episode, which is Madison telling Morgan, “You never really lose people, none of us do.” What does that realization do to Morgan?

LENNIE JAMES: Well, I think it’s something that has been gnawing away at him from when he first heard it from Alicia, when Alicia first told him that this was something that her mom said. I think it is the thing that has quietly and secretly been at the heart of what’s been eating away at Morgan is just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, that he finally kills his wife because his wife attacks his son. You find that there’s another layer, which is that his son is still walking the earth. And I think in part, what Madison says operates on two levels. One is that he has to go back and he has to make that right. And two is that it’s okay to hurt about the people and mourn the people that you’ve lost. You don’t have to run away from that. You can sit with it, you can live with it, you can recover from it, you can absorb it. And I think that’s in large part what it feels like for Morgan.

Let’s piggyback off of that. Morgan fears losing Mo and losing himself. But by not letting her go, he almost loses her on the houseboat. It’s not until Morgan realizes that he can let her go and not lose her that he breaks the cycle, which ultimately brings them together. What do you think Morgan’s ending looks like here if he doesn’t break that cycle?

LENNIE JAMES: Well, we’ve seen what Morgan’s ending would’ve been. We’ve seen him lost, we’ve seen him broken. It would’ve been some more terrible version of that because I think to a certain extent, Mo is a victory for Morgan because he’s lost everybody else. He’s lost Jenny, he’s lost Duane, he’s lost Grace, he’s lost John Dorie. I think he’s in a position where if he doesn’t win with Mo, it is pretty much a different ending. It’s pretty much an ending ending, I would imagine.

We’ve seen Morgan as “Clear” Morgan, the peaceful warrior Morgan, the morally-gray Morgan. Here, he ultimately realizes that “all life is precious” isn’t about killing or not killing — it’s about what you do with the time and the people that you have. How would you describe who Morgan is now at the end?

LENNIE JAMES: I’m not sure I can describe it any better than you just did, actually. I think that you are absolutely right that — I personally, Lennie, not Morgan, have always believed that “all life is precious” isn’t about whether you kill or you don’t kill. “All life is precious” is about how you live your life. What is the focus of your life? You can live a life, particularly in the apocalypse, where death comes easy. What Morgan’s saying is we should strive for death to come hard. We should strive for anyone’s death to matter, for it to count, and that we should take a responsibility for the lives we take and the lives that we protect. And I think when he walks away with Mo, Morgan is at a stage possibly for the first time where he can actually put that belief into practice.

Let’s talk about that. How do you feel about how Morgan’s story ends here? The final scene in Eastman’s graveyard felt like the perfect sendoff for the character.

LENNIE JAMES: I hope so! It’s been a long, old road with Morgan. There are many different ways it could have ended. I think that the boys, our showrunners, not necessarily went for a happy ending because there’s no happy endings in the apocalypse, but went for one that offered some kind of hope. Morgan is one of the people that I believe people would wish for hope for him. And I think that’s what this ending gave him, strangely.

Can you reflect on your time as Morgan on The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead? At the end here, what are you going to miss most?

LENNIE JAMES: The people that I was working with, the cast, the crew, our directors. I mean, I know it’s a cliche, but both — I have direct experience of it because on leaving The Walking Dead, I missed the people, the crew, the folks I saw every day, the actors that I worked with, the friends I made. That familiarity that everyday-ness, I really missed. And I’ve missed that on leaving Fear, because obviously I left and they carried on for a few. I’ve had it twice, so I know exactly what I’ve been missing and what matters. Because neither show, it’s not going down a mine, it’s not being a police officer, it’s not life-endangering, but it is nonetheless hard work. We shoot most of our episodes outside in not easy weather conditions in either Texas or Georgia. And it takes a real commitment for the people who put it all together. And those are the people that I’m going to miss.

I’m going to miss the routine. I’m going to miss the stories we tell. I’m going to miss hanging out, I’m going to miss sharing at close proximity in the lives of people I really, really like. And there’s a lot of them I’ll keep in contact with. There’s a lot of them who have become friends for life, but there’s still an absence. There’s still a [feeling of] something has ended and I’m not exactly mourning it, but I am missing it.

Fear the Walking Dead Season 8 returns with its final episodes later in 2023 on AMC and AMC+.

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