Everyone’s off to the state fair, even the demons! Especially the demons!

We’re sprinting along now and this episode uses the gloriously weird excess of the Texas State Fair to throw an unrelenting lens over every character’s problems, even as those problems become manifest. Literally.

Kit’s need for a soul, and to be loved, is front and centre again but this time we get a look at how long he’s been trying and how long he’s been manipulated. The fluid, feverish animation over his flashbacks is beautiful and unsettling. The show has a subtle and definitive visual grammar and it’s used here to connect Kit and Michael. They’re also connected because no one else in the show has as little fun and both are going through massive changes. In Michael’s case, his hallucinations are revealed to be prophetic and very short term as chaos breaks out.

That chaos is born in and catalysed by the individual plots here. Michael’s desperate need to communicate with Stella mirrors Kit’s need to communicate with Jentry and all the while Jentry knows Gugu is lying and Ed is fighting a vendor who’s mistaken him for a doll.

It’s a lot. All of it enormous fun. Ed’s plot especially has surprising weight to it as his professional offence at jangshi being written off as ‘pathetic and easy to scare’ turns into him being a vital, and frontline part of the team as the episode finishes. The closing fight is the show’s best moment yet, the colossal wooden cowboy figurehead of the fair turned into a living, moving behemoth by Jentry’s fight with bounty hunter Solar Tang. By the time it’s done, Kit and Jentry know everything about each other, Michael has saved Stella but not his relationship and Gugu has finally come clean about why she’s been lying to Jentry. All of this, plus a major cliffhanger, means this episode sprints along, gives everyone big things to do and ends in a serious cliffhanger.

Verdict: Another excellent episode in a great show. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart