Troy finds something terrible out in the wilds as the Ranch continues to just, barely, hold it together.

This is an episode Fear the Walking Dead couldn’t have dreamed of doing even last year. The scale of what we see is an obvious challenge but it’s the way the show marries pacing to character and action that really makes this fly.

What you get here is a two-stage story. Wes Brown wraps an exploration of the difficulties of successful leadership in the post-apocalypse around an interesting look at three brothers. Troy and Jake are genetically related certainly but it’s Troy and Nick who have the real kinship. The two outsiders have circled each other all season and this episode we finally see a power dynamic shake out. Nick is, to his own clear astonishment, the grown-up. He’s grounded and smart and Troy is neither of those things. Driven by his insatiable, nihilistic curiosity, Troy wants to push the Ranch till it breaks and watch what happens.

He gets his wish. And the cost is very high.

The way the episode gear-shifts from that close in work to scale is effortless. Alrick Riley’s direction puts the three men, and Alicia and Ofelia’s equally resonant and powerful scenes, in the middle of something that’s almost too big to see. The Herd, the first one we’ve seen on FTWD, is a harbinger of not just destruction but what the world is now. Different, brutal, monolithic.

And it’s in that vast horror that the characters find their strength. Alicia, Ofelia and Crazy Dog leading the doomed defence of the Ranch is a season highlight precisely because it happens so fast and feels so real. There’s a moment where it looks like all three could die and that’s a level of jeopardy even the mother show has struggled to reach at times.

Verdict: An episode that feels like FTWD in a nutshell: morally compromised survivors doing their best to stand against a Death that doesn’t care about them. It’s one of the best episodes the show has produced to date and even the cliffhanger feels earned and real. Another impressive episode and one that sets up even better to come. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart