Aaron and Gabriel are recruited by Aaron’s boss to negotiate with a community living in an apartment complex for possible Commonwealth membership. Nothing goes according to plan.

There are few things in this world I love more than ‘one last job’ stories and this is very definitely one of those. From the moment we see Aaron visiting a clearly happy Gabriel in church you know things are going sideways. And honestly, so does Gabriel. Seth Gilliam and Ross Marquand are two of the best elements of this cast and both get great stuff to do here. Gilliam’s delivery on ‘Nope, I’m not doing this’ especially is fantastic as is Marquand playing Aaron as, at last, getting to do some good again. Special note as well of genre stalwart Jason Butler Harner as Carlson, Aaron’s boss and the very real desire he seems to have to do good until Hornsby wakes his inner demons back up.

After all, this is the Commonwealth. Good has a price.

That price turns out to be the real mission: discovering a cache of arms stolen in the area. Carlson is an old friend of Hornsby and also a former CIA agent with a lot of skills he’s worked very hard on putting in a box. This is where Butler Harner carries more than he should, showing us Carlson’s turn from reformed killer back to rabid wardog with more nuance than the script allows. In fairness though he does have a colossally traumatic experience: facing down an entire apartment block led by a man with a collection of the skulls of his enemies.

And played by Michael Biehn!

The 80s/90s icon has big fun as the dangerously still cult leader at the core of the complex and he helps ground the episode in fascinating, morally adrift territory. Yes he’s done some bad things. Yes Carlson has too. But are we more than the sum of those things? The episode asks this of everyone, from Gabriel the priest who it asks to pick up weapons again, to Aaron the former NGO officer so desperate to do good he can’t see his boss is going off the rails. Carlson too, the CIA killer whose reform collapses before our eyes and Ian, who sits with the bones of his enemies to protect his people. Oh and Negan! Alive, and well, and quietly instrumental in saving people’s lives and alerting Hilltop to what’s going on.

Verdict: Dangerous, complex, ambiguous and ambitious storytelling for a show going harder than anyone could have expected in its final year. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart