Fear the Walking Dead Gives Morgan’s Baby a New Nickname

Fear the Walking Dead gives a new meaning to the “nuclear family” when Morgan Jones (Lennie James) and Grace (Karen David) adjust to life as a parenting couple in Season 7. When we last saw them as survivors of the nuclear warheads detonated by Teddy (John Glover) to end Season 6, Morgan and Grace hunkered down in the USS Pennsylvania — the beached submarine where Teddy turned Texas into ground zero of the nuclear zombie apocalypse. After the stillborn death of Grace’s daughter Athena, who absorbed a lethal amount of radiation from her mother, Morgan and a grieving Grace adopted Baby Morgan: the orphaned daughter of Isaac (Michael Abbott Jr.) and Rachel (Brigitte Kali Canales). 

In the fallout of Season 6, Morgan and Grace have taken to calling Baby Morgan “Mo.” Reads AMC’s synopsis for Season 7 Episode 2, “Six Hours”: “As Morgan, Grace, and Mo struggle to adapt to life on the submarine, a food shortage forces them to face the nuclear fallout outside the sub.”

“The loss of Athena — we will find out the effect that that loss has had on Morgan. I only say that because I think it’s going to manifest itself in unusual and unexpected ways,” James previously told AMC.com. “I think it’s going to affect the choices he makes. I think it’s going to affect the actions that he takes. I think it’s profound for him because, obviously, the loss of a child would be. I think it brings back memories of the previous child that he lost and I think it kind of compounds it.”

Morgan finally grieved the deaths of his wife Jenny (Keisha Tillis) and their son Duane (Adrian Kali Turner) in Fear Season 5, allowing him to move on and hope for a future with Grace and her child in Season 6. Then Athena died and Teddy dropped a bomb on their new beginning. 

“But I think also the timing of it on one level for Morgan is really telling because it was at a moment where he allowed himself genuinely to invest in the future, to take a chance on Grace, to take a chance on, as he said, the possibility of being the father to her child, the possibility of being a partner to her, the possibility of seeing beyond tomorrow and hoping,” said James. “And more than anything really I think that what Athena took with her when she died, on one level, was Morgan’s belief in hope and, like I said, that’s going to manifest itself in many different ways [in Season 7] outside of just the general pain that he feels.”

Athena’s death and the destruction of the home he hoped to build for her has Morgan “completely at a loss” to start Season 7, James teased, and keeping up with the Joneses means Morgan is “going to be challenged in ways that he’s not been challenged before.” 

 Fear the Walking Dead returns October 17 on AMC or stream early starting October 10 on AMC+. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD.

READ: Fear Season 7 Trailer Unleashes a Nuclear Zombie Apocalypse

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READ: Fear Returns in October With New Cast Members for Season 7