Goodbye Morgan…

It appears to be official. Morgan will be yanked from The Walking Dead and magically transplanted into the Fear The Walking Dead world. Why Scott Gimple, why?

Well, the only valid reason is that Gimple and AMC are trying to save FTWD from it’s continued loss of viewers. Now here’s a thought: rather than pull one of the most beloved characters from TWD to hopefully boost ratings on it’s spin off show, maybe it would make more sense to get better WRITERS!

Actually, the writing isn’t what killed it for me when it came to Fear The Walking Dead. It was the subtitles. When half of an episode is in Spanish with teeny weeny English subtitles and I’m all cozy on my couch with my small tv WAY over there across the living room so I can’t read the words at the bottom of the screen no matter how I adjust my glasses… well, I begin to loose interest. Sure, I could have invested in a 110 inch television or something but… really? And eventually I no longer looked forward to Sunday nights in the summer but gently let them go.

When Fear The Walking Dead premiered in the summer of 2015, I was stoked. It looked interesting, starting from Day One of the outbreak. I didn’t even need it to be an amazing show, just something that held my interest over the summer while I waited for The Walking Dead to return in October. And the first season and most of the second did exactly that. I was terribly disappointed that the writers rushed through the beginning days of the outbreak, but I dealt with it and continued to embrace the show. And not so secretly hoped that Tobias would resurface. That kid was awesome. Fear continued to hold my summer Sunday nights interest until it made no sense anymore. I slept through French class in high school, not Spanish!

So, let me make it really clear. Morgan is one of my favorites on TWD. From that very first episode where he was so perfectly human, helping Rick, comforting his son and not able to bear shooting his zombie wife in the head, no matter how much he knew she was no longer the woman he had loved. Morgan was an important part of the very heart of The Walking Dead. He held that bit of humanity that we all hope will still be present in a post apocalyptic world. We all wished for his return someday, waiting and watching, cheering when he was revealed in “Clear” Season 3 Episode 12. Yes, he was now a broken man who had lost his son Duane and had lost his marbles in the process, but it was still Morgan. Deep down, he still held a flicker of that humanity that we all loved about him. When he came back full force after the tease where he ponders the Terminus sign that Rick has defaced, fans of The Walking Dead and original character Morgan Jones were deliriously happy.

But ripping Morgan from TWD now to move him over to FTWD will not magically make me start watching Fear The Walking Dead again. That ship has sailed. I’m sure some fans will follow Morgan and maybe watch FTWD for the first time or pick it back up again simply because of Morgan. Bless them, enjoy it, have fun. But I won’t.

And so, with great sadness, I reckon it’s time to say Goodbye Morgan.

p.s. When AMC started teasing a crossover, I really really REALLY hoped it would be Tobias moving over from FTWD to TWD. Imagine that little survival kid, crossing the country for all those years, hearing vague reports that the East Coast was a safe zone, and traveling the heart of America to eventually find Rick and his merry band of survivors in Alexandria. Now THAT would have been a fun crossover. Tobias might even have crossed through Nebraska. Who remembers Nebraska?