Kate hasn’t given up hope that her sister can still be salvaged from the wreckage that is Alice, but Alice’s latest plan will test Kate and the whole of her family to breaking point and beyond.

If this week’s episode (which is the last before the epic Crisis multi-show event) has a theme, then it’s damage. Brutal, emotional toll on all parties that leaves the viewer feeling every bit as battered as the characters on screen.

Opening with a monologue about how Kate still clings to hope that her sister Beth is still in there somewhere under all the emotional and physical scar tissue of Alice, the episode then basically takes the shape of a brutal demonstration of just how misguided that hope is, and just how much damage it stands to do.

For Kate herself, it means risks presented to all of her family, close and extended. It means physical risk to the actual people and emotional risk to them and their relationships to her. It means realising finally just how far-reaching and permanent that damage might be as long as her blind spot for her errant twin sister persists. It means consequence, that most fundamental part of any good drama.

But that damage isn’t confined to Kate. It’s spilling over everywhere, to Mary, to Catherine and to Sophie. Turns out that barrelling back into town the way she did and making the choices she’s made is upsetting all sorts of apple carts, and it’s going to be stuff that’ll take a long time to fix (if it ever can be).

Most interestingly of all, it doesn’t ever leave us with anything black and white. Alice, as ever, is a compelling villain precisely because Rachel Skarsten and the script are so good at drawing the audience in – we always half-suspect she has something devious on her mind, but it doesn’t stop those occasional glimpses of humanity and soul to the character from pulling us in, making the inevitable moments of violence and horror that follow all the more impactful.

But even beyond that, the episode leaves us with so many grey areas. Catherine may not be a monster, but she’s also not an entirely good person. The episode asks some relevant and difficult questions of its characters in ways that this sort of television often fails to do, and more importantly it leaves us under no doubt that as much as she’s trying to be a good person, Kate hasn’t necessarily got the right answers for those questions, much as she might think otherwise.

Verdict: It’s a compelling, heart-wrenching, emotional rollercoaster of an episode, and it’ll leave you feeling emotionally exhausted. Amazing television. 10/10

Greg D. Smith