What’s left of Silver Team is rescued by Kwan and Laera and flees to Aleria. Soren and Laera look for their son, while Riz comes to a surprising realisation.

This episode got slammed on release and on some level you can understand why. The all out war of the previous episode is replaced by a focus on the secondary characters and the processing of grief. Very little actually happens but that’s the point. This is the pause for breath everyone and everything needs to process trauma and the episode is as clever as it is kind-hearted, as cold-eyed as it is compassionate.

This is a story about grief, and how you deal with it. John, barely able to stand after his injuries, spends much of the episode railing against the very idea Vannak should be buried. He argues, repeatedly, that the Spartans were all buried by their families and the process is irrelevant. Riz, severely injured to the point of permanent impairment as she retrieves Vanak’s body, thinks differently. Natasha Culzac plays Riz with serenity this episode as one of the most fiery soldiers in the series realises her battle is over and survival is the victory she gets. It’s a controversial idea, anathema to John, but you can see how much it heals Riz, even as her injuries persist.

In the middle of the two is Yerin Ha as Kwan who has been patiently doing excellent work this season in the background of other people’s plots. Here she steps all the way to the front as the one person who wants to bury Vannak. Determined, scrappy, bloody furious and far more comfortable with crushing loss than John, she just does it and the ensuring funeral is one of the best scenes in the series. Kwan’s positioning as the conscience of the show is very wise and the set up for her to be something more, trailed last season, looks set to pay off in some interesting ways. It’s a good episode for Pablo Schreiber too as he shows us every emotion John’s going through when he finally sees his dead friend’s face. His delivery of ‘Put him in the sky’ is heartbreaking. Otto Bathurst lights the scene by torchlight and Basil Lee Kreimendahl’s script gives Schreiber and Culzac some of their best material to date. By the episode’s close, Riz is retired and John is re-dedicated, a weapon in human form pledged not to fight the war that’s abandoned him but to get vengeance for the people they’ve lost. It’s tragic, but it’s also the only way he can process the situation, at least for now.

The bulk of the rest of the episode sits with Soren and Laera and it’s great. They’ve always been one of the uneasy elements of the show but the way they’re folded into this plot is a highlight of the season. They spend the entire episode chasing down their son and processing their feelings about Soren’s line of work, Bokeem Woodbine has really relaxed into being this universe’s designated Han Solo and he’s great here as a man who feels truly dangerous without being flamboyantly so. There’s a scene here with the two people they suspect have taken Kessler that ends in a way I never expected but works perfectly. The bookend to it, a scene which Fiona O’Shaughnessy delivers her best work in the show to date as Laera, is even better. They’re not great parents, or people, but they’ve made a life for themselves with what they have, just as Riz choose to.

Verdict: This is a quiet, sad, resolute episode that spreads the load across the ensemble. There are minimal fireworks but don’t let that fool you. There’s a lot to enjoy here. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart