As the bomber’s identity becomes clear, Layton is faced with hard choices as the demons of his past come back to haunt him.

Pike finds himself rudely awoken and hurried along to Wilford’s former quarters on Big Alice where – irony of ironies – Layton and Zarah are holed up with their new baby, fearful of the next move by the mysterious bomber. And so the games begin.

Except, ten minutes in, the episode switches up the game, outing Pike to Layton and setting in motion a chain of events that can only, inevitably lead to one conclusion. It’s a smart move from a show that thrives on producing tension in its characters and the situations in which they find themselves – having everyone treat Pike as one of the team while we the audience scream at them that the bad guy is right there might well have worked, but it would have been expected. Predictable. Cliché.

Instead the writers choose to ratchet up that tension by having Pike go on the run as his former allies and friends – Layton included – wrestle with the idea of what he’s done. To Layton perhaps, it should be the least surprising. Pike has always been volatile and dangerous, and Layton, for all that he tries to be a decent man, has used Pike cruelly more than once. It’s one of the running themes of the show, in reality – Layton the ‘good guy’, on the side of right but capable of doing so many wrong things for a ‘good cause’. Meanwhile Wilford is the obviously evil character, taking great pleasure in the torment of others and the power he wields over them, even as he too ultimately pursues what he believes to be a greater good. Perhaps the only thing separating them is honesty – something which in this case the bad guy has and the hero lacks.

At any rate, it isn’t just Layton who has to struggle with this revelation. Poor Ruth, who has come to hold so much affection for Pike, can scarcely believe the truth. Others too – all the great and the good from the revolution – can hardly credit that the man who is both comrade and hero could have done this, and once again those cracks in the foundations of Layton’s power base spider out a little further.

Continuing a theme of betrayal, Miss Audrey bargains her way into a visit with the still recovering Wilford, and doesn’t exactly find what she’s looking for. The genius in Wilford as a character has always been his unpredictability. He seems by turns quite terminally rational and absolutely mad and you’re never quite sure of exactly what he’s thinking or what he might do next. To that end, though he may appear quite broken by his near death experience at the hands of Roche, I remain unconvinced that we can count on that remaining the case.

Of course, on a train one can only run so far, and inevitably there must be a confrontation between Layton and Pike, though one done following the oldest traditions of the tail. This gives us quite the most tense scene of the show to date, as two men who really want to kill one another must sit face to face and air their grievances. All the bitterness in Pike is matched by all the cynicism in Layton. One wants to kill. One wants to do anything they can to diffuse this situation. Both are in a no-win scenario, and the show makes us feel every ounce of weight that carries.

Once again, there are small threads of hope throughout, not the least being Alex making a new friend and a family starting to repair bonds which had seemed shattered. Green shoots of optimism in a hellscape of lies, desperation and double speak. As I’ve said previously, though the personalities of those vying for power over the last survivors of humanity loom large, the real importance is attacked to those survivors as individuals and a collective.

Verdict: Powerful without needing to be action-packed. Slow without being sedate. 9/10

Greg D. Smith