As the survivors in the Pantry struggle for air, Alicia makes a series of impossible choices and Nick and Troy abjectly fail to ride to the rescue.

This is stunning. Alycia Debnam-Carey has been a massive asset to this show for a while now but this episode she’s electric. Alicia, her namesake, does everything right. She makes impossible call after impossible call and every decision is motivated to keep her people alive.

Every single one of them, bar the main cast, is dead by the end of the episode.

This is the cold, brutal truth that both the Walking Dead shows have, on occasion, glossed over. This isn’t a world where heroism is a bulletproof vest. It’s a world where every good choice can still get you dead. Or in Alicia’s case, surrounded by the undead.

The genius of it comes not just from the locked-in jeopardy but from the way it projects the Clark siblings’ relationship onto a blood-soaked, shambling canvas. Nick is flamboyant, brilliantly intentioned and useless. Alicia is dutiful, hardworking, principled and left behind. This is their world and it’s one that as the episode ends, Alicia is not prepared to live in or with anymore.

Aided by a fearsomely good supporting turn from Linda Gehringer as older survivor Christine, Debnam-Carey establishes herself as the show’s centre here and it’s incredible to watch. Balancing cold determination with rage and terror at what she’s had to do she’s become a leading character by the time the episode ends.

And that’s the one problem. We may well be down a Clark sibling by the end of the season and Alicia, long resentful about this aspect of her life, is finally making steps to do something about it. We desperately hope those steps don’t get her killed. This show needs her. And as this episode shows, she is more than up to the task. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart