Fear the Walking Dead Answers What Happened to Morgan in Season 5 Cliffhanger

Sunday’s sixth season premiere of Fear the Walking Dead answers what happened to Morgan Jones (Lennie James) after being shot point-blank and left for dead by Virginia (Colby Minifie) in last season’s cliffhanger ending. “End of the Line” cuts to black without revealing whether Morgan survived Virginia’s murder attempt, cut short by a pack of walkers threatening to tear Morgan apart as he radios his group of split-up survivors. In “The End Is the Beginning,” Virginia hires ax-wielding bounty hunter Emile (Demetrius Grosse) to find Morgan — dead or alive — only to learn Morgan Jones is somewhere in between.

When he crosses paths with Isaac (Michael Abbot Jr.), a former Pioneer ranger who fled Virginia’s rule with his pregnant wife, we learn Morgan blacked out to end Fear‘s fifth season. Morgan survived only through a last-minute rescue by a stranger, who stuck around just long enough to stitch him up before leaving him alone.

“I was shot. I was barely hanging on,” Morgan explains. “Walkers were about to tear me apart, and I heard gunshots. Walkers dropped, I blacked out. Woke up later and… I was patched up.”

Morgan is patched up, but not out of danger: Isaac offers to extract the bullet embedded in his shoulder, warning it’s perilously close to his pulmonary artery. If it fragments and Morgan moves the wrong way, Isaac says, “You could die.”

In the five or six weeks since his near-death experience, Morgan’s wound has turned gangrenous. No longer fresh meat, Morgan’s necrotic tissue makes him invisible to the undead — allowing him to bypass the swarm of walkers blocking Isaac’s path to his pregnant wife. In exchange for Morgan bringing supplies to Rachel (Brigitte Kali Canales), Isaac offers somewhere safe for Grace (Karen David), who Morgan learned is pregnant before being separated at Humbug’s Gulch.

When Emile tracks Morgan and Isaac to the dried valley hideaway, Morgan offers to surrender without a fight if he leaves the couple alone. Morgan accepts his fate until Isaac intervenes, fending off Emile before urging Morgan to bring his people here. It has to be Morgan: Isaac reveals a bite on his midsection.

Summoning the last of his strength, Morgan impales Emile with his staff and decapitates him with a single swing of the hunter’s ax before passing out. When he wakes up the next day, he learns Isaac removed the bullet before succumbing to the bite.

Later, Virginia is gifted Emile’s reanimated head inside a box marked “Morgan Jones.” Issuing a threat to Morgan over her walkie talkie, Virginia warns him to stay away from his old friends if he wants them to live.

From a distance, he answers the call: “Morgan Jones is dead. And you are dealing with somebody else now.”

Reborn as a lone cowboy somewhere between the Morgan who had to “clear” and the pacifist Morgan who believed all life is precious, the Morgan With No Name lives to ride again.

Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD. New episodes of Fear the Walking Dead premiere Sundays at 9 pm ET/8c on AMC.