Nick makes a choice. Morgan makes a very, very different one.

Nick and Morgan aren’t characters you’d instinctively think are alike. One is a recovering coke addict and adrenalin junkie. The other is a martial arts expert who is racked with guilt at his inability to both save those he loves and die himself. But both men have been out past the edge of the post-apocalypse world. Both have walked with the dead, albeit one more enthusiastically than the other. And here, they embody the different mindsets of their groups.

Nick is rattled so badly by Charlie’s betrayal that it pushes him out into the last place he wants to, or needs to be: the outside world. This is the Old Nick, the wily survivor. Or at least, this is a man convinced he’s that Nick. From his opening confrontation with Ellis to his bookended meetings with Charlie, Nick is off the ethical and psychological map and pays the ultimate price for it.

Morgan for his part is far calmer. He has no choice given his leg, but he’s also been here before and never had the luxury of seeing it from the outside. He recognises everything Nick sees and does, knows what’s going through his mind and does the bravest, kindest thing he can: lets him work through it. It’s absolutely the right call and in a kinder world would lead to Nick’s slow return to something approaching equilibrium.

This isn’t a kind world. Nick kills Ellis. Ellis kills Nick. The show is down its most interesting, longterm player.

OR IS IT?

Nick is absolutely, definitively dead. But the colossal refit the show has undergone this season means he isn’t gone. The flashbacks this episode are especially affecting as Nick and Madison head out on a scavenger run and Madison tries to turn her son around. The change from Madison, grieving (and pretty racist) militia leader last season to Madison, leader, this season is massive. She’s calm, grounded. Able to find the good in anything. And that ability is the thing that gives her son some peace in his final moments. We’re not done, with either of them, but we’ve seen the end of one of them. I suspect the end of the other isn’t far behind.

Verdict: This is a different show and I know that’s turned some people off. But FTWD’s willingness to embrace a string of massively hard choices, and make the best of all of them, means this is already the strongest season the show has ever had. Not to mention the weirdest. We miss Nick already, but we know he’ll be back next week… 9/10

Alasdair Stuart