(minor spoilers)

Flynne’s health takes a turn. Wilf visits Flynne in Clanton, deepening their relationship. Flynne learns the truth about her future.

We spend a lot of time in future London this episode and, finally, we learn about the apocalypse, or The Jackpot as the survivors have named it.

We also learn some home truths about what it took to rebuild society in the wake of its collapse. None of those truths are palatable even to those who engaged in them.

Wilf has his first proper outing as someone engaging with the world around him. Until now he’s been flat, used to tie different parts of the story together but here we have some sinew and flesh added to this character which let us see just how different he is from those he works for. Gary Carr does a fantastic job of holding that neutral pose when cornered or pressurised by those more powerful. He has a moment of vulnerability with Flynne that’s superb because we see how much it costs him to say just one short sentence about himself to someone, anyone. Wilf learned early to keep who he was entirely hidden so as to be a better chameleon for those who might cast him away if they saw who he was and what he thought.

For someone like Wilf it’s not that his internal monologue is outlandish but the fear he holds is that any part of him might be cause for rejection in the eyes of the powerful. Better to survive by reflecting back to them exactly what they show him first. It is classic survivor behaviour and so well portrayed here.

If he’s blank or neutral it’s a pose that the marginalised learn all too early. Not for us the performative outrage of being infringed upon – we learn quick that demonstrating our pain and our anger only brings more of the same from the powerful who regard such responses are flags indicating we’re prime targets for persecution and rejection.

The difference between Wilf and his employers is stark and I can’t but think that he’s our hero among all those characters we’ve met so far. The one whose principles are clear, defined and, although simmering beneath the surface, ready and able to guide his actions.

Unlike Flynne and Burton, Wilf’s view of the world has come from surviving something so horrendous no one speaks about it with clear words, preferring euphemisms instead.

That’s not to say Burton and Flynne haven’t had their own struggles but they feel like they’re of a different order no matter how tough they were.

Compared to Lev and his kind, they’re peas in a pod but the show is careful not to let that gulf between the haves and have nots flatten the relative experiences of those on each side.

It’s a deeply satisfying episode anchored by two scenes – one with Flynne suffering a medical emergency and then, later, being told what happens to the world just a few years from where she is now.

What’s so impressive is how the museum of the Jackpot is rendered on screen; eerie, repulsive, enthralling and entirely overwhelming. As good visual art can be when it touches on the things we cannot clearly express with words.

Each step of the way The Peripheral is impressing me and it comes down to the simple fact that its characters feel real and the world they’re moving through feels like it works.

It’s still not clear who or what is pulling the strings, nor what the true stakes are but much has become clearer. For many of the characters the stakes are potentially individually fatal but there’s a hint that for Flynne and Burton the stakes could be, perhaps, the entire world.

There’s no sense that Lev and his people are trying to save her stub but there’s also a sense that they’d attempt it if they thought it was profitable.

This episode finished the movement around the board from episode 3. I’m fully expecting there to be some explosive turns as we move into the second half of the season – there are many threads in this story and they’re going to come together both in the near future and in London post The Jackpot.

Rating? 9 stolen, stolen things out of 10.

Stewart Hotston