The Walking Dead Finale: Carol and Morgan on the steps

A picture paints a thousand words and Greg NIcotero painted beautiful words with the image of Carol and Morgan on the steps in The Walking Dead finale.

In the season 7 finale of The Walking Dead, Carol and Morgan joined the fight after both had tried to stop fighting and killing in order to survive without killing everything they are inside. Surviving has to mean more than just your heart still beating.

Carol and Morgan both had beating hearts when they arrived at the Kingdom, but their hearts were broken and they needed to heal. The Kingdom, with its magnificent leader and luscious cobbler, guarded by soft padded soldiers, was the perfect oasis in the midst of the guilty hunters that walked among the innocent walkers.

But hunters hunt and an oasis is only a temporary sanctuary. Not everyone follows Ezekiel’s rules of the well. Sometimes we have to replenish the well for what others have drunk.

Morgan and Carol, our apocalyptic fraternal twins, were replenished enough from living in the little house to rejoin the Kingdom.

To rejoin their old friends. To rejoin the fight. To rejoin each other. To make surviving mean more than just a heart still beating.

Shielded with the Kingdom armor and the promise of protecting their family, they showed up in Alexandria just in time. A most grand entrance. Shiva and Ezekiel both roaring. Morgan and Rick silently nodding. Working in perfect rhythm with their friends, new and old, they forced the Saviors to retreat.

After the dust cleared, it was Morgan and Carol who sat together on the steps, wordless, hands clasped, in an image that painted a wistful picture of two friends, whose lives are precious, who are protecting other lives that are precious to them. Their hands could almost be seen by us as clasping each other’s hands.

Next: Morgan and Carol in the season 6 finale

The steps and their silence gave them strength to begin to replenish their wells for what is to come. Their wells will need a lot more water.  But it’s a start. They have each other and the quiet.

Alexandria did not fall. Morgan and Carol did not fall. Not on that day.