From what I understand, FTWD timeline is the beginning of the outbreak and takes place before the plague reached Georgia, so there is plenty of time to build a FTWD backstory for Morgan that happens before Morgan meets Rick in TWD.

I liked the actor but have burnt out on him. I'm supposed to accept him as some kind of kung fu expert while he waddles around in his baggy pants and enormous clown shoes sticking out at a 150 degree angle. He looks like post apocalypse Charlie Chaplan. Terrible choice for cross over.

Enjoyed him in season 1 and when he was on Jericho. Now my irritation has reached a point where even his accent bugs me.

One of the Saviors would have been more interesting. Show them losing their good alignment.

@Horus Mazinga said:

I liked the actor but have burnt out on him. I'm supposed to accept him as some kind of kung fu expert while he waddles around in his baggy pants and enormous clown shoes sticking out at a 150 degree angle. He looks like post apocalypse Charlie Chaplan. Terrible choice for cross over.

Enjoyed him in season 1 and when he was on Jericho. Now my irritation has reached a point where even his accent bugs me.

One of the Saviors would have been more interesting. Show them losing their good alignment.

Agree about Morgan. He has overstayed his welcome. Now we have to see him on Fear.

From what I understand, FTWD timeline is the beginning of the outbreak and takes place before the plague reached Georgia

That would seem to compound a plot hole that’s been present in the series for a long time. Rick doesn’t find out that everyone’s infected with the zombie virus until the scientist at the end of Season 1 whispers it in his ear, and the secret isn’t revealed to us, the audience, until the end of Season 2. After it is revealed, however, it seems that every group they encounter from then on was perfectly aware of it.

That seems odd. Not only did Rick have to go through all that time in the first two seasons without encountering a single person die from any cause other than a zombie bite, none of the people he meets along the way did either—not the original group he joins in Season 1, and not anyone on Hershel’s farm, which keeps an entire barn full of walkers. Did ALL those walkers really die by being bitten? If not, how is it that nobody in Hershel’s group figured it out?

In FTWD (which I only recently binged), we get to see some of the original societal collapse that the main show mostly skipped over by having Rick be in a coma throughout it. From what we see, it’s almost impossible to believe anyone who went through all that would be ignorant of the fact that everyone turns after death. The very first character whom we SEE turn (Nick’s dealer), dies from a shot wound, not a walker bite.

So how is it that Morgan, the man who first lays out the rules to Rick, is unaware of this central fact of the plague? Previously I might have assumed he was somewhat of a loner and at the point of his first meeting with Rick the only person he had seen turn was his wife. But if he’d been interacting with other people such as some of the characters from FTWD (never mind how), that explanation is shot. There’s no way he wouldn’t know everyone turns after death.

Great points, Kylo. The reveal that everyone is infected was a major event for characters on TWD. On FTWD they knew from the beginning. Its such a nonissue that I dont think anyone talked about it.

@Drew007 said:

Doesn't Morgan have somewhat of established backstory? Wouldn't his participation in FTWD change what was established in TWD? I guess they can do it, however they need to establish how he ended up in Texas. In TWD he spent most of his time in Georgia, I guess they could do it between the time after the death of his son and him meeting Rick and him meeting Eastman, I think that is his name, it has been a couple seasons. It just seems odd that they would choose him and not Abraham.

I suspect that once they kill you in the TWD-verse, you stay dead.

@Kylopod said:

From what I understand, FTWD timeline is the beginning of the outbreak and takes place before the plague reached Georgia

That would seem to compound a plot hole that’s been present in the series for a long time. Rick doesn’t find out that everyone’s infected with the zombie virus until the scientist at the end of Season 1 whispers it in his ear, and the secret isn’t revealed to us, the audience, until the end of Season 2. After it is revealed, however, it seems that every group they encounter from then on was perfectly aware of it.

That seems odd. Not only did Rick have to go through all that time in the first two seasons without encountering a single person die from any cause other than a zombie bite, none of the people he meets along the way did either—not the original group he joins in Season 1, and not anyone on Hershel’s farm, which keeps an entire barn full of walkers. Did ALL those walkers really die by being bitten? If not, how is it that nobody in Hershel’s group figured it out?

In FTWD (which I only recently binged), we get to see some of the original societal collapse that the main show mostly skipped over by having Rick be in a coma throughout it. From what we see, it’s almost impossible to believe anyone who went through all that would be ignorant of the fact that everyone turns after death. The very first character whom we SEE turn (Nick’s dealer), dies from a shot wound, not a walker bite.

So how is it that Morgan, the man who first lays out the rules to Rick, is unaware of this central fact of the plague? Previously I might have assumed he was somewhat of a loner and at the point of his first meeting with Rick the only person he had seen turn was his wife. But if he’d been interacting with other people such as some of the characters from FTWD (never mind how), that explanation is shot. There’s no way he wouldn’t know everyone turns after death.

What makes you think Morgan doesn't know about humans are being infected and turning when they die?

What makes you think Morgan doesn't know about humans are being infected and turning when they die?

He’s the one who first gives Rick a primer on walkers. He explains all the “rules”: they travel in herds, they’re drawn by loud noises, they continue moving until their brain is destroyed, and so on. Here’s how he explains how walkers are created:

“But listen, one thing I do know: Don't you get bit.... Bites kill you. The fever burns you out. But then after a while, you come back.”

Now, if you want to get all lawyerly, technically Morgan’s explanation doesn’t exclude the possibility that almost everyone who dies becomes a walker. But if Morgan knows it, there’s absolutely no reason why he wouldn’t tell Rick this information. They’re boarded up in a house, they’re not pressed for time, and he tells him just about everything else to help him survive on his own. And that’s a pretty crucial bit of information to leave out.

In FTWD there are multiple scenes in which an old person unexpectedly dies of natural causes and turns into a walker. That’s something that ought to have been happening all over the place, for the sick as well as the old. In fact the characters on FTWD don’t even think of the walkers as a plague spread through bites: they just think getting bitten is another thing that kills you, and that it’s death itself that leads to turning.

The idea that someone who went through the apocalypse as it was happening wouldn’t be aware of that, and would somehow get the impression that only people bitten by other walkers become walkers, is hard to accept. The only remotely plausible explanation with Morgan is that he’s a loner who just doesn’t spend time around a lot of people besides his own family.

I haven’t read the comics, so I don’t know how the issue was presented there, but I have a feeling the writers came up with the idea that everyone’s infected somewhat late in the process and then sort of retconned it into the story. It was a major twist on the show, since it’s something you don’t normally see in ZA stories. The problem is that it creates plot holes, and plugging the pre-Rick Morgan into FTWD only further enlarges them.