This is what a home run looks like.

In a series that cynics could argue is made up of nothing other than Very Special Episodes and a season that began with a Christmas Special, this is as personal as Sense8 gets. The focus is largely on Nomi and Neets as Nomi’s sister’s wedding approaches and every family prejudice comes out to play.

It could, so easily, be forced and trite.

It never is.

The opening speech Nomi gives about her sister is a season highlight, Jamie Clayton bringing the exact level of humour and honesty to it. It’s never grandstanding, never on a soapbox. It’s just a very honest, very funny and profoundly moving story about what it’s like growing up with a sibling, growing up trans and what happens when those two intersect. I don’t know how much of this is drawn from life, either Clayton’s or Wachowski’s but it all feels like it is and that’s the highest possible compliment I can pay the episode.

Elsewhere, Wolfie considers his very limited options and Riley and D find the zombie factory we saw at the top of the season. Meanwhile, Capeheus discovers just how the stakes are in his political race, Kala is not quite threatened and Daniela works her magic. That last is arguably the best scene she’s ever had and one of the few instances this season you could argue that the show pushes its luck. But its done so well, and with such realism and charm that it wins you over.

Likewise the confrontation with Agent Bendicks at the wedding. The idea of Bendicks not bothering to check if Nomi’s warrants are still active is clever but the setting takes the show way closer to blockbuster than it normally is. However, again, it works. Not just because of the way it’s handled but because of the message the scene sends. Nomi’s dad standing up for her, calling her his daughter for the first time, is a punch the air moment that feels earned rather than cheap and sends that plotline off on a high note.

And then Will’s dad dies.

Sense8 is a show so concerned with interconnectivity and the emotional intimacy of friends and family that you sometimes forget some people aren’t in the Cluster. The way this sequence is put together will just rip your heart out. Contrasting Will’s complicated memories of his dad with D and Riley (And Will via Riley) walking in to see him is hard but the scene is just getting started.

It’d be easy to hide behind the analyticals here, to talk about how it’s likely that in his last moments Will’s dad’s brain changes sufficiently that he can perceive Will through Riley. But that does the scene a disservice. It builds, cutting between Will and his dad playing catch on one of their last good days, the old man’s final moments and Will crying his eyes out in the loft in London. Slowly the elements intermingle until Dad leaving for work is him dying, Will as a child is in the hospital room and Will in the loft is still completely, irrevocably alone. It’s honest and complex and horrible and Brian J. Smith’s work in It in particular will crush you.

Verdict: This is a complex, difficult episode that focuses on the familial side of the Cluster’s lives. It’s built almost entirely from what comes before it and is hard, profoundly moving and the sort of TV only Sense 8 could make.  9/10

Alasdair Stuart