The Walking Dead spoilers are below.
So far, Morgan’s arrival in Alexandria hasn’t really been at the center of a lot of people’s celebrations on The Walking Dead. He doesn’t see eye to eye with Rick on how to handle the Saviors, just as he didn’t see eye to eye with Carol on what to do with those pesky Wolves. And no one else is jumping on his “life is precious” bandwagon. So it made sense that he was spending some time alone in “Not Tomorrow Yet,” and he was seen busy on some slightly mysterious project. It turns out that, as you may have guessed, Morgan is building Alexandria’s very first jail.
Even without seeing the half-finished wall or the bars, it wouldn’t take more than a few blind guesses to land on what Morgan could be constructing. He’s certainly not going to be slapping together a lemonade stand for Enid to run, and the community hasn’t posted up any flyers about a soap box car race, so he wouldn’t be doing that. So yeah, a jail cell is the most reasonable option, and director/effects wizard Greg Nicotero explained to Yahoo why that is.
He’s building a cell. The jail cell that they had wasn’t necessarily much of a jail cell. It was like a little room with a little metal gate. I think Morgan is committed to the next time they have somebody in there, if they need to, they’ll attempt to rehabilitate them. He wants to be equipped. It goes back to his story with Eastman. Let’s be honest, Jesus didn’t last very long in that place. It can’t be that secure.
Morgan is one of the only characters who (at least vocally) asserts his belief that not every threat needs to be killed, and that some form of rehab is possible with anyone. And he is the walking testimonial, having gone through that exact experience with John Carroll Lynch’s Eastman during the flashback episode. Sure, not everyone is going to be in the same state of mind that Morgan was in, and not everyone will be able to get over the hurdle of reversing immoral decisions. But Morgan will never know if he doesn’t try. And step one is creating a place for that rehabilitation to occur.
His (and everyone else on The Walking Dead’s) track record for holding onto prisoners is not that great. Morgan sort of tried to trap those two first Wolves after he knocked them out, but it didn’t hold. His hostage situation inside the house wasn’t very successful either, considering the guy knocked him out and got away. And then we all know that it took Jesus hardly any time at all to escape. So here’s hoping Morgan’s design and craftsman skills are stronger than some of his others.
Now that there’s going to be a jail cell in Alexandria, the obvious question now is: who’s going to get put in there first? Will it be one of the Saviors or even Negan himself? Or, more likely, will Morgan piss Carol off in such a way that she handles it by keeping him locked up with absolutely no chance of a cookie dessert?
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