What's going on with Morgan's weird red eyes in Fear The Walking Dead season 6? The situation looked grim for Lennie James' Morgan Jones at the end of Fear The Walking Dead's fifth season. In a desperate last resort, Morgan's group were forced to seek aid from villainous local leader Virginia, who duly swung by and picked up the protagonists. However, she made an exception with Morgan, deeming him a threat to her position. Virginia shot Morgan and abandoned him to a nearby pack of zombies, leaving season 5 on a major cliffhanger.
First released back in April, the trailer for Fear The Walking Dead season 6 showed that Morgan is still alive... for now. The footage highlighted a badly struggling Morgan being hunted by one of Virginia's mysterious assassins. Meanwhile, Morgan's friends are now scattered, with some in the wild and some forced to assimilate into one of Virginia's authoritarian settlements. The trailer's money shot is, typically, the final image, which briefly shows a man with crimson red eyes. It was confirmed during Fear The Walking Dead's SDCC 2020 panel that this character was, as many suspected, Morgan Jones, but these red eyes aren't something The Walking Dead fans have seen much of in the past.
Many are taking Morgan's red-eyed look as a surefire sign that he'll turn into a zombie in Fear The Walking Dead's upcoming season. This seems unlikely, as the vast majority of the show's undead come with graying or whitened eyes, as if they were going blind. The world of The Walking Dead hasn't often used bright red eyes for those on the turn. A more likely explanation is that the red is simply blood, whether Morgan gets a drop of blood in his face, or whether he bursts a blood vessel. This could be the most realistic scenario, as the season 6 trailer shows Morgan desperately struggling to stay alive. It's only natural that he would either get covered in blood or push himself to the point where his blood vessels are completely shot.
This is a fairly unadventurous explanation, especially considering Scott M. Gimple has already promised fans that "something's going on." Fortunately, there are some more exciting alternatives. A key feature of Fear The Walking Dead's fifth season was radiation poisoning from power plant zombies. Since the franchise is so vague about the nature of the outbreak, it's possible that the radiation combined with the zombie virus has some unique side effects, and that Morgan either got poisoned in season 5, or is afflicted with radiation early in season 6. The nuclear zombies seen last season didn't have red eyes, but the radiation/virus combo may cause different symptoms with the living. Grace thought she was sick, but was actually just pregnant, which means Fear The Walking Dead has never shown the effects of long-term radiation poisoning in the zombie apocalypse. Something similar occurred with a batch of unwell walkers in The Walking Dead season 4.
It's worth remembering that The Walking Dead has previously mislead viewers with dramatic trailer shots. The season 10 trailer showed Michonne holding Lucille and then included another shot of her and Ezekiel kissing, setting up a romance from the comic books. When these episodes aired, the Lucille scene was taken from a dream-like sequence, while the kiss with Ezekiel turned out to have no significance whatsoever. Fear The Walking Dead could be pulling a similar trick with its red-eyed Morgan shot. Lennie James' character has suffered a grievous injury and it's not unusual for wounded characters to suffer hallucinations in the world of The Walking Dead. Perhaps Morgan is dreaming of himself becoming a zombie because he's so afraid of dying.
Whether Morgan's eyes are real or an illusion, the meaning behind them is undisputed. When Morgan became wild in The Walking Dead (before learning stick fighting and chilling the hell out) he would shout "all I see is red" as a way of expressing his intense rage. Whatever happens in Fear The Walking Dead season 6 is a literal representation of that line, whether blood simply got in Morgan's eye, or whether he's experiencing an elaborate dream.
Fear The Walking Dead season 6 premieres October 11th on AMC.