Chris is finally brought in by ARGUS, Red St Wild makes his move and instantly regrets it.

There’s been some interesting discussion about the pacing of this season and you can see why some folks are feeling a little dissatisfied. We’re now over halfway and Chris has discovered the pocket universe, kind of toyed with it, been almost captured by ARGUS more than once and ultimately decided to run away from his problems.

On paper that looks like a sight plot that’s been padded out but I don’t think that’s what we’re seeing here. Instead, I think this is a show where Chris Smith’s emotional and psychological struggle is the main engine of the plot. He’s toyed with the alternate universe, idealised it and now is formally moving there, and we couldn’t have got to this episode without everything that came before it. Chris had to be burnt, had to be confronted with the consequences of his actions and had to feel like he had no choice to get here. This is an episode that finishes with a door opening to what he thinks is a better life and closing on the life he has.

The key scene this episode is the confrontation between Flag Sr and Chris, and speaks to this entire read. Flag beats him halfway to death, to the point where it’s actually hard to watch. Frank Grilllo is an exceptional physical actor with legitimate martial arts skills and John Cena has spent twenty five years knowing how to stage fight and take a punch and it’s all on screen. But what makes it work is Chris’ lack of physicality. He killed Flag’s son for a job that betrayed him. He can’t fix that. But he can let Flag work it out on him.

The other key element to all this is that Flag’s actions divide ARGUS. One of the highlights of the season is Economos and Harcourt frantically trying to formally book Chris so he can’t be disappeared. One of the others is Fleury, who has been comic relief so far, complimenting them on doing the right thing. But the most chilling beat here is Flag, who as the episode closes is revealed to have done all this because he knew how Harcourt and Economos would act. Dangerous for more than one reason, Flag Sr is becoming one of the most fun elements of the show.

All of this drills Chris down to a fine point and a single objective: leave. That in turn gives us a neat cameo from the kaiju from Superman (Does the alt universe have a Superman? We may be about to find out), a sweet moment with Alt Harcourt and a growing sense of doom. It also puts the Eleventh Street Kids back on the same page and gives us a couple of surprising emotional moments, including Adrian sobbing his eyes out at being left behind.

Verdict: All great, vital stuff. All character centric and pushing the plot forward. And all taking place in an episode which also has the single best payoff imaginable for the Red St Wild and Eagly plot. I don’t want to talk about it in detail because the beat is so perfect but I laughed and applauded. It’s a perfect, wacky note in an episode that’s anything but. It also confirms just how good, and how confident, this season has been so far. And next week, at last, I suspect, we get some very bad news about the pocket universe… 9/10

Alasdair Stuart