The Walking Dead delivered a serious blast from the past in last week's 'The Damned', with actor Juan Gabriel Pareja reprising his role of Morales for the first time in seven years.
Having launched a full-blown assault on the Saviours' compound, Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) was stunned to come face-to-face with his former ally, now another of Negan's minions.
Bringing Morales back to the show after such a lengthy absence threw up some interesting possibilities. Was he really lost, or might Rick convince him to switch sides? How would this man with loyalty to both Rick and Negan factor into their ongoing feud?
But then, in this week's 'Monsters', the character was swiftly killed off – felled by a crossbow bolt delivered by another old friend, Daryl (Norman Reedus).
"I know who it was," Daryl growled, after Rick sought to reacquaint him with the now-deceased Morales. "Don't matter. Not one little bit."
Which begs the question... what was the point of bringing the character back at all?
He was barely on-screen long enough to explain what he'd been doing since he and Rick parted ways, before being written out again. And we still don't know his first name.
The first, most obvious motive for revisiting Morales – who last appeared in season 1, episode 5, 'Wildfire' – is pure fan service. It's a tip of the hat to those of us who still remember the character's original (not all that memorable) four-episode stint back in 2010.
But in terms of the narrative, that's not very satisfying. Reintroducing an old face just to create a little bit of buzz? It might be fun, but it's ultimately a gimmick.
What did Morales actually accomplish in this briefest of returns? Well, his reintroduction posed a question: who is the real bad guy here?
From Morales' point of view, it's Rick who is the "monster" – the man who's been striking at, quite literally, his Saviours. After Morales lost first his family and later his mind on that ill-fated trip to Birmingham, it was Negan, not Rick, who was there for him.
From an outsider's perspective, another question presents itself: are Rick and Morales really so different? The two men started out on this journey from the same point and have both been transformed by loss and a relentless life of brutal violence.
Despite loathing who Rick has become, Morales even makes the comparison between the two of them explicit. "Soon as I saw you, I knew you'd made the same trip as me," he says. "I guess we aren't the same guys we used to be."
In different circumstances, could Rick have become one of Negan's followers? Though he – unlike Morales – survives their encounter, Rick is clearly shaken up by the unexpected reunion and its implications.
So that's it. As the title of the latest episode suggests, the big question raised by Morales' return is.... who are the real monsters?
Which is fine, except we've been here before. Many times.
It's a repeated trope on The Walking Dead: Rick is faced with a new nemesis – whether it be The Governor, or Negan, or any of the show's less memorable antagonists – and rallies the troops to defeat them.
But in doing so, he learns more about this so-called villain – discovering that maybe there's more to them than meets the eye. He's also forced to resort to increasingly violent methods to defeat them, blurring the lines between the two further.
'Is Rick really any better than the so-called bad guys?' is a question that The Walking Dead has considered and reconsidered time and time again. We're still dealing with the aftermath of the show's previous take on it, with Negan's butchering of Abraham and Glenn being instigated by Rick's own callous slaughter of dozens of sleeping Saviours.
So if, besides fan service, the only other reason to bring Morales back was to serve us one more clichéd, "We're not so different, you and I" speech, then it really wasn't worth it.
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