— -- Fans tuning in to Sunday night's episode of "The Walking Dead" looking for signs of life for Steven Yuen's Glenn were left doubly disappointed.
Firstly, the actor's name was conspicuously missing from the opening credits for the first time since Season 1. That led many to think that after a week of speculation about how his beloved character may have somehow been spared a fate filling walkers' bellies, he may not have. In addition, the episode, "Here's Not Here," didn't follow the events of last week's episode at all.
Instead, the episode focused on what happened to fan favorite Morgan (Lennie James) that turned him from a wild-eyed killer in Season 3's "Clear" to the Zenned out, bo staff-wielding pacifist he's become when he catches back up with Rick and the gang in Season 5. This path is told to the viewer via flashbacks, but orally, we discover, to the Wolf clan member Morgan cornered in Alexandria -- who, let's face it, Morgan should have brained with his staff.
However, braining a truly deserving recipient of one wouldn't comport with the lessons we learn Morgan learns from a kindly cabin resident named Eastman (John Carroll Lynch).
Their relationship starts off troubled, to say the least. Morgan, in full scavenging mode, happens upon a goat and the cabin in a clearing in the woods. Instead of heeding the warnings from an unseen resident to leave the goat and home in peace, Morgan tries to shoot the resident, but gets knocked out and wakes up inside the cozy home -- in a prison cell where the living room should be.
He wakes to find food next to him, and a copy of "The Art of Peace," a text by the founder of aikido. The man who knocked him out, we learn, is Eastman, but when he asks Morgan his name, he answers only "Kill me."
"That's a stupid name," Eastman replies.
Over the next few days and weeks, however, the pair learn to trust each other, with Morgan eventually opening up to the forensic psychiatrist, who, as it turns out, never locked Morgan's cell. He begins to show him that "all lives are precious" -- even those of the walkers -- and buries each one, using their long-forgotten licenses to learn their names for makeshift grave markers.
Eastman schools Morgan in aikido, which is all about redirecting attacks, and he tells Morgan about his life before the world ended -- it was his job to evaluate criminals up for parole. And in all the 825 people Eastman interviewed for the state, only one inmate truly frightened him: Crighton Dallas Wilton, a man who fooled everyone except Eastman. When he was refused parole, Wilton nearly killed him -- but thanks to Eastman's aikido training, he was able to escape alive.
Eastman explains Wilton escaped captivity only to slip into the shrink's home and murder his wife and son and daughter, before turning himself in. Eastman, for his part, we learn, abducted the prisoner and put him in the cage in which Morgan found himself. Unlike Morgan, Eastman locked the box, and over 47 days, deliberately starved Wilton to death while he watched.
He teaches Morgan that he learned that vengeance, killing, doesn't bring peace.
However, some kind of happily ever after nibbling goat cheese isn't to be. Walkers attack, and when Morgan comes face to face with a teen he himself killed, he freezes, and Eastman takes the bite for him.
Eventually, with his lessons passed on, Eastman accepts his fate, and dispatches himself off-camera with a firearm he keeps handy.
Flashing to the present, Morgan finishes his tale to the Wolf he has cornered, but it falls on deaf ears: "I know I’m probably going to die, but if I don’t, I am going to have to kill you, Morgan," the maniac says. "I'm going to have to kill every person here ... the children, too. Just like your friend Eastman's children. Those are the rules, that's my code. I'd say I'm sorry, but you said it, right? 'Don't ever be sorry.'”
Morgan leaves the man, though he locks him inside the Alexandria apartment as the episode ends. "The Walking Dead" returns next Sunday, Nov. 8, at 9 p.m. Eastern time on AMC.
