The two trains play a game of cat and mouse through the darkness as Wilford and Layton struggle to gain the upper hand in the war.

If there’s one thing you can fairly guarantee with Snowpiercer, it’s that when you think you know exactly who’s who and where your sympathies should and shouldn’t lie, it’ll flip on you and make you look at everything a whole new way. Layton was a hero. Ruth was, if not exactly a villain, certainly a villainous lackey following orders. Now, Ruth is a hero of the resistance, and Layton, well…

Jumping in exactly where we left off last week, the two trains are racing along within metres of one another, both sides bracing for a fight. The issue is, the fight Layton thinks he’s about to have isn’t the one that Wilford has in mind – turns out that Big Alice’s train isn’t quite as defenceless as Layton might hope, even without that spangly EMP doodad from last time out. That means problems, and leads to an extended game of cat and mouse between the two trains which lasts most of the episode.

Meanwhile, Wilford orders Kevin to round up some resistance members and start really applying the pressure. This is something the odious man takes great delight in doing, and no surprise he commandeers the Night Car to do it, which emphasises, through their respective reactions, just how different Oz and LJ are, and how much LJ really hasn’t changed at all.

Back on Snowpiercer, Layton and his crew desperately search for an angle that can give them the edge and allow the capture of the rest of the train. Some assistance at the right time is crucial to their plans and then… well then things start to alter before our eyes.

Wilford is a horrific person in many ways – a gifted engineer and a ruthless exploiter and manipulator of human beings. Layton is his polar opposite in many ways, being empathetic and mostly kind, but he’s also a survivor, and not above doing bad things to get what he perceives to be good results. Here, that involves him doing the one thing that Wilford – for all his faults – never does: engaging in a deception. And it’s a big one, one that has the potential to fatally undermine whatever faith and trust the man has amongst his followers.

And suddenly the world of Snowpiercer has flipped again. The good guys are suddenly that little bit grubbier, and you start to reflect on things like Layton ordering Pike to assassinate someone, the bloodshed of the first uprising and the fact that Layton is now expecting a child with his ex-wife, effectively abandoning the woman in whose arms he took comfort when Zarah left, who sacrificed so much because of her love for and belief in him.

In Snowpiercer, as so often in real life, there are no absolutes. No unimpeachable good guys who won’t cross certain lines and no out and out evildoers who have no redeeming qualities. It’s perhaps this more than anything which makes a show about the last train full of humans hurtling through the frozen apocalyptic wasteland of the world feel so grounded, and so compelling.

Verdict: Doesn’t pull its punches and shows evidence of heading in interesting new directions. 9/10

Greg D. Smith