‘The Walking Dead’ Season 6 Episode 4 review: ‘Here’s Not Here’

After last week’s shocking cliffhanger with Glenn, The Walking Dead took a left turn this week for a contemplative bottle episode that put the spotlight on the ever-changing Morgan.

There’s been a growing feeling this season that The Walking Dead has been staying inside its comfort zone a little. It’s been a strong enough start, but the only real narrative risk the show has taken is Glenn’s supposed demise, which has trapped the show between a rock and a hard place in many ways.

Thankfully, ‘Here’s Not Here’ finally saw Season 6 begin to push the boundaries a little, with impressive results.

Chief to the success of this episode is how it successfully and smoothly portrays Morgan’s transformation. Lennie James is integral to this, taking on the tough task of taking two very disparate versions of Morgan – the nihilistic, violent man of Season 3, and the peaceful Zen warrior of Season 6 – and slowly knitting them together.

James pulls off both facets of Morgan superbly with a powerful, emotive performance, and a script that patiently portrays the transition, taking advantage of the extended run-time to provide a seamless and hugely satisfying character journey within 65 minutes, compounds his strong performance.

Showrunner Scott Gimple has always been a pair of safe hands, and it’s a testament to his strong script that Morgan’s journey doesn’t feel remotely rushed despite the magnitude of development the character undergoes here.

Lennie James has a great sparring partner here too, in the form of John Carroll Lynch’s Eastman, the fabled cheesemaker who trains Morgan up. Again, it’s the extended run-time that works in the episode’s favour here, allowing for the slow build-up and fleshing out of a character who emerges as an impressively complex creation for someone who’s never even been mentioned by name before.

Eastman’s wistful, regret-tinged monologue about the psychotic prisoner who ruined is life is delivered with considerable pathos by Lynch, who evokes so much sympathy in his understated performance that his eventual death by zombie bite (Morgan’s past quite literally coming back to bite him) feels like a punch to the gut.

Ultimately, it’s the thematic depth of ‘Here’s Not Here’ that elevates it above an above-average character piece. The themes of trust and redemption are common ones, but they work because of not only how well they’re threaded throughout each of the meaningful dialogues between Morgan and Eastman – but also because they’re surprisingly hopeful for a show whose default mode is barely-disguised nihilism.

The episode is tinged with genuine optimism – for once; the commonly accepted idea that killing is necessary doesn’t seem like the only option. It’s tonic after the depressing undertones of last episode (that compassion equals death), and reassurance of The Walking Dead’s versatility – as this episode showed so well, The Walking Dead doesn’t always need to be thoroughly depressing to be enjoyable.

As the icing on the cake, ‘Here’s Not Here’ also provided an intriguing twist for the present day storyline. It’s perhaps not a huge surprise that the Wolf Morgan confronted at the end of ‘JSS’ isn’t dead – if this episode had revealed him to be dead, it would have nullified its central message – but it’s still a decision with potentially huge ramifications for Alexandria. After all, it’s hard not to imagine that the Wolf’s threat to break out won’t be made good on in some way…

Admittedly, this episode might not be a particularly big crowd-pleaser, and its awkward placing in the season means it has slowed a little of the momentum built up last episode.

Still, this is a bold, emotional instalment with a fantastic central performance from Lennie James, and it’s hard not to admire how The Walking Dead is taking punts like this six seasons in. After last week’s slip, season six is firmly back on track.