Lindsey Morgan Looks Back on ‘Walker’ Season 1 and Hints at Micki’s Next Move

[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Walker Season 1 Finale, “Drive.” If you haven’t watched it, go get a drink at the Side Step and come back when you’re living right.]

Walker wrapped its first season tonight with a highly emotional—and at times hard to watch—hour that finally revealed the whole truth about who killed Emily (Genevieve Padalecki). Picking up right the last original episode, Cordi (Jared Padalecki) had gone rogue with a kidnapped Stan Morrison (Jeffrey Nordling), ultimately gathering the entire Walker family to confront their so-called friend in the very spot where Em met her demise.

There, Stan filled in the blanks about how his ties to the Northside Nation proved deadly for Em after she stumbled upon him with Cali (Katrina Begin) in the desert while attempting to get supplies to Mexicans across the border. Realizing Emily was the wife of a Ranger, a gun-toting Cali gave chase and wounded her, then forced Stan to prove his loyalty by delivering the death shot. It was heartbreaking. As was the flashback of Geri (Odette Annable) discovering her friend’s corpse shortly after the shooting.

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While all of this was going down, Micki (Lindsey Morgan) was dealing with issues of a more domestic kind as she and Trey (Jeff Pierre) prepared for the first official meeting of their mothers (including Micki’s birth mom, Mercedes!). But because she is also the best, Micki put brunch on hold and jumped right into action once she got wind of Walker’s situation, recruiting Trey for her plan to get to Em’s originally convicted killer Carlos Mendoza before NSN’s goons could silence him. Once the dust settled, it was a captive Stan who was eventually shut down permanently, someone was keeping a very close and creepy eye on our guy Cordi and Micki was offered an undercover gig to go after a new crime syndicate.

Will she take it? Will she have an unexpected reason to turn it down? We went straight to the source—the awesome Lindsey Morgan—for some post-season scoop. And just like Micki, she didn’t disappoint.

Congratulations on the first season! Micki has been awesome! Just the coolest.

Lindsey Morgan: Thank you! Thank you so much. She is pretty badass. I agree. [Laughs]

Anna Fricke [showrunner] did right by you with this character. She really made sure that this was not just the Walker show.

Yeah. Yes. Micki completely stands on her own and is her own entity and I love everything about it.

Obviously you and Jared have hilarious chemistry. It just clicks so perfectly. It’s like the buddy-cop show that nobody realized was coming.

Completely. No one knew it was coming or that they needed it! I did not expect to be part of so much of the comedy, but I love it.

There’s so much stuff going on this season finale…there was some talk last episode of Micki maybe wanting to have a family, or what if she got pregnant? So when she’s offered this undercover position at the end of the episode, is that something that’s going through her mind or is she not telling us something else?

Ooh, you read into that one! Is there a bun in the oven? [Laughs] You never know.  I think in the finale, you really get to see her contemplate her next step. All throughout Season 1, it was just this new chapter for her, the beginning of this new life in this world of the Rangers. And she was jaded and she was on guard and she had a lot of walls up. Then as the season’s gone on, I feel like you really just got to see her blossom into being a Ranger while also really opening her heart to family and relationship and love. Even though it was trying at times and there were obstacles, she really grew a lot. She made a lot of steps and moves towards healing and repairing this part of her life. Being open to love and to family is the next step.

So at the end of the finale, she’s essentially getting a promotion by getting this opportunity to possibly go undercover. But then at the same time, she’s torn because we saw firsthand as to what that did to Walker when he went undercover, how that affected his home life and how many bridges he had to rebuild after that. So she’s torn between this amazing new thing, a new job, and also feeling personally responsible to protect Walker. How and will it affect everything she’s worked so hard to build here with my family and with my relationships? And I think she’s optimistic, but also I think it’s impossible for something not to be a sacrifice.

I feel like Micki is smart enough to figure out how she can kind of get a little bit of both of them.

Yes. She definitely thinks she’s smarter than Walker for sure. [Laughs]

Oh, definitely. But I feel like she can manage getting some part of the undercover gig or some sort of part of the promotion and still retain the family stuff.

That’s the goal. And that’s what I love, too, about seeing a woman in law enforcement managing the work-life balance. I feel like we don’t see a lot of women in these spaces. We maybe see women in law enforcement on TV or film on the job, but we don’t see them when they get home and how their home life was affected by the job. So I really love that with Micki. That’s what we’re delving into and that’s what she’s going to be navigating in Season 2.

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Oh, and I need to ask: What is the Lone Star Pu-Pu Platter?

[Laughs] It’s like the [best] of everything that Texas has to offer. That’s the barbecue, that’s fajitas, that’s queso, that’s kolaches…

Okay. Sounds amazing.

Yeah, you ain’t getting that anywhere else but here.

Well, I will come down for it. Going back to the idea of showing women in law enforcement. Usually, their only friends are someone else on the force, but you and Odette Annable (Geri) had this really nice scene where I thought, “Oh, neither of them have good girlfriends anymore.” Will we explore this?

I definitely hope so. I love working with Odette. She’s hilarious. We have so much fun. But also we just really clicked instantly as people and as friends, and I feel like our characters fit. Geri’s smart, super smart, and Geri is just very genuine and also a truth-teller. So is Micki. They don’t take any bullshit and they just speak their truth and they have really good hearts, so I think they saw that in one another. And obviously they have something in common with the kind of guiding poor Walker and helping him navigate in the world. But I loved that they were able to see an understanding in each other, and again build a trust and a friendship with each other. You know, us girls need each other in the world.

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Especially with everything Geri has gone through and what she had to keep under her belt. That’s hard stuff, and she didn’t have anyone to talk to.

I know, I know. I think people forget how much Geri has lost. She lost her best friend. She lost her boyfriend and she’s grieving. She also lost her business, technically. She’s grieving so much. She killed someone. Girl has gone through a lot.

Given how much heaviness this hour had, with the Stan stuff and the flashbacks to Emily’s murder, it was really nice to have the counterbalance of you and Jeff Pierre (Trey). I love Micki roping him into a scheme to go into the hospital and that he just does what she tells him to.

Trey is a ride-or-die. But that’s what I love the most about Trey. And I’m almost like, “This man is perfect.” He really holds so much space for Micki and he’s always supportive. He understands her almost more than she understands herself. It’s almost like he’s a little bit more mature when it comes into the relationship and he’s not pushing her, he’s not pressuring her. He’s holding her hand as she runs and makes her moves and every time she stumbled, he’s there to pick her up and help her. And so I really don’t think Micki could have been as successful in this chapter of her life without Trey. He was that missing piece to her puzzle that she needed. I don’t think she realized how much she needed and how much she was missing in her heart until he stepped up in this new way.

Rebecca Brenneman/The CW

Nice. And now you also have Summer Days, Summer Nights coming up.

Yes! We dropped the trailer this week!

The long-awaited release.

Oh my gosh, I know. I can’t even believe it. I think it’s been four years. It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had on set. Ed Burns is just brilliant. He wrote it, he’s in it and he directed it. And I love Ed’s work because it’s always like a slice-of-life, a piece of humanity. He talks about how a lot of it was based on him growing up in Long Island and on the Rockaway beaches in the summer…that summer love and coming-of-age and what the next chapter in our life is when we’re at that age, right out of high school or college. There’s so much possibility in the air and anything can happen. And so it’s just about that short moment, right before you’re about to leave home, to go and make your mark on the world. It’s extremely special. I loved every moment of it and I was so bummed when it didn’t come out immediately, but I’m so happy that it’s found a home. And it’s coming up! August 24th.

 

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I need to let you go, but one last thing: Do not think I didn’t notice that Jared’s soaked-through in the courthouse shootings scene. That Texas heat is brutal.

Poor Jared. [Laughs]

Hopefully Season 2 starts filming in cooler weather. When do you go back to work?

We start prep in five days. [Laughs] I know. Isn’t that crazy?