Fear the Walking Dead
8×04: “King County”
Directed by Kenneth Requa
Written by Andrew Chambliss & Ian Goldberg

* For a recap & review of 8×03, click here.
* For a recap & review of 8×05, click here.
Morgan is back in King County, the former home of Rick Grimes and the place where Morgan once holed up with his own family. He goes back to his house, but he can’t make himself go past the door, hearing sounds from the inside. He walks back out into the street, telling himself he can do it, killing a group of zombies, but he screams to himself: “I can‘t do it!” Then he hears a truck on the streets and sees it’s a PADRE vehicle. He’s greeted by Grace, who says he told her to come. But Morgan says he never told her to come. Hmm, odd, no? Right now, Grace only cares about the sink on Morgan, whose clothes are stained not just with walker blood but with walker blood from walkers that were feasting on a skunk. The parents also discover that Mo is in the back of the truck hiding. It’s Mo who sent the message to Grace, attempting to reunite their little family. She asks if all this is about “Jenny and Duane.” Morgan reveals to them that his son is still “walking around.” He came back to King County to finish things properly. They return to the house, where Morgan sits on the porch and tells Mo and Grace about what happened when Jenny turned into a zombie, biting their son. Mo says they’ll go inside with Morgan, refusing to let her father face something so horrible by himself.

But they don’t get a chance to go into the house. A flare goes up nearby and soon there are PADRE soldiers on horses in the neighbourhood. It happens to be Dwight and Sherry. They call Morgan out of hiding. They’re not willing to let this pass, telling him they have to return him to PADRE. They’ll take Morgan back to PADRE if it means getting Finch back, not to mention Morgan did the same to them years prior so he could get back to Mo. When zombies show up, Dwight and Sherry find Mo and Grace hiding. This changes things. Dwight offers to try passing off zombies as their dead corpses. But even Morgan thinks that won’t work. Yet Dwight urges him to make a decision. Morgan can’t leave King County without taking care of his son, so he grabs his staff and then him, Mo, and Grace rush for shelter.
Morgan, Mo, and Grace take shelter in one of the last houses where Morgan and Duane stayed before his son died. Not exactly good for the mental health, however, there aren’t a whole bunch of options. At least it’s a place to stay away from the zombies outside. Plus, Morgan finds some tomato soup to use, at least masking the smell of the dead skunk. Mo asks her father if things will ever be good again, like it used to, and he replies that there’s a chance of it. He then apologises for saying him and Grace weren’t Mo’s parents. Grace urges Morgan not to go to his son, saying it’s not in the spirit of “a second chance.” She says he’s scared “of the past repeating itself” to the point he’s making it repeat.
No more discussion right now because Dwight and Sherry are back with more PADREs. They can’t get too close to the house because of walkers. Sherry talks to Morgan over the radio and tries to offer help with whatever he’s in King County to do. He explains the situation with his son. But there’s no sympathy for him. A flare goes up from the PADREs, drawing more walkers to the house.

Mo and Grace find the room upstairs full of insane graffiti. They ask Morgan what it’s all about, but he can barely remember much, especially after Duane died. He assumes he came back there after Duane was gone. He tells his daughter things “went wrong” for him a long while. He was killing “anyone and anything” that came within his general vicinity. He’s grown a lot since then. Mo finds a photograph of Morgan’s family and sees her father smiling; she and Grace comment on his wonderful smile. They start to think about lost time, right as another flare alerts more zombies to the house. Morgan uses his rifle’s sight, for a moment thinking he’s seeing his dead wife again but it’s just a quick nightmarish vision. He sees that Dwight and Sherry are pushing forward. They’re going to force Morgan out of there, one way or another. Yet Mo and Grace have a plan to get them past the PADREs, and maybe if they get to the island before anyone else, they’ll be able to help Dwight and Sherry get Finch back, too.
“Can we just start killing the carrion, please?” Mo begs her mother and father after Grace and Morgan share a smooch. Then the family head outside together, as Morgan uses his rifle to blast away zombies while Mo and her mother use their own weapons until Mo has to retreat back inside. Morgan has another horrific vision of his dead wife. He and Grace nearly end up in a bad situation until he pulls the trigger on a flaming zombie. They still do because the PADREs are nearby. Dwight insists they have to be shown Duane or else PADRE isn’t going to believe it.
So, they all head to the old house. Sherry says they’ll make sure Mo is okay afterwards. Then Morgan goes to a closed door, behind which are zombie noises. He hesitates. He asks Dwight for a gun, and Dwight trusts him enough to hand one over. They open the door but it isn’t zombie Duane behind it. Morgan looks around and discovers a zombie on the floor dead. He covers it with a blanket. That’s when he starts to unravel, yelling for his son. He’s sure his boy must be there. Grace tries to console Morgan, but he’s angry at himself for putting Mo and Grace in danger over nothing. The PADREs think Morgan was lying about why they went there. Shrike orders over the radio to kill Morgan if he won’t give his reason. Morgan says to go ahead and kill him. Dwight and Sherry take action, saving Morgan from being “killed in cold blood.” They’re being forced by PADRE, but they won’t just allow Morgan to be murdered like that. Dwight tells Shrike to let Finch on the radio, and the parents get to hear their boy, who’s okay, other than worrying about them. He asks Finch to do the “chimney sweep” move, and he does it well, knocking Shrike out. They give him directions to get to the mainland and meet back up with them.
Before Dwight leaves he tells Morgan there’s another chance to do things differently this time around with Mo. First, Morgan and Grace have to go get Mo from the house surrounded by walkers. He thinks he’s not fit for the job. Grace tells Morgan that the radiation is catching up to her. She can feel it making her more and more ill all the time. She’s not well, so that means Morgan can’t give up right now; Mo needs her father more than ever. Grace says she’s “paying the price for chasing the dead,” and she doesn’t want Morgan to do the same. So he assures her they’ll spend time as family once they get their daughter to safety. And they better do it quick because the house has caught fire, forcing Mo upstairs and then into the attic.

When Morgan tries to get back to the house he keeps seeing his dead wife when he aims down on zombies. In the attic, Mo discovers a zombified Duane changed to a wall, reaching out for her. She gets trapped by a falling beam from the roof. Morgan comes up into the attic, forgetting that he clearly went mad and chained Duane up there at some point. He finds his zombie son about to chomp down on his living daughter. He has no choice but pull the trigger, finally ending his son’s suffering and allowing his daughter to live. What a HAUNTING moment! Some terrifyingly Gothic work here in this episode; maybe my favourite Fear the Walking Dead episode this season so far.
The next morning, Morgan buries his son properly.

A zombie bursts from the ashes of the burnt house, nearly chomping on Mo, but Morgan and Grace save their daughter. Only problem is, Grace got a bite in the process, meaning the timeline of her already expected death is just going to speed up now. Good lord. These folks have been through enough. Elsewhere, Dwight and Sherry meet up with Finch after he’s able to escape PADRE. They’re tracked down by PADREs but Morgan shows up to shoot them down. Morgan wants to get Grace the treatment Finch received for the bite. It’s all a matter of time. “No matter what‘s coming we have to live,” Morgan says; the two parents will do ANYTHING to survive so they can help their daughter as long as possible.