As all hell breaks loose, the original survivors become consumed with vengeance, John battles for his life and the truth about what happened at the Stadium edges ever closer.

If there’s a weak spot with this half of the season, it’s that Naomi and Charlie remain distinctly one note. Naomi has tried to escape constantly even after her background is revealed and it’s getting a little tiresome. Worse still, Charlie physically murdered a major character. Whether she can come back from that is a question dwarfed only by whether the lead characters will let her. Luciana is genuinely close to killing her here.

These two women and the moral difficulties they embody split the group. It’s fascinating, and disturbing, to see the original characters turned into something close to Saviors: relentless, brutal, furious engines of vengeance. Alicia’s murder of Mel here seethes with rage and the image of them firing at the truck carrying a child and a wounded man is genuinely disconcerting. Likewise the newbies are almost certainly on the wrong side and know it, but what else can they do?

It’s thick, complex territory and the show has earned enough trust to believe it’ll bring all this into land. Especially as the way this episode is structured brings us solidly to the fall of the Stadium and the aftermath. Whether Madison is alive or not remains to be seen (my money, given how hard the show has worked to make us think otherwise, is she is) but what’s certain is that this is a strong, assured half season sprinting to a big finish.

Verdict: The bugs are looking like features, the end of the world is looking like an interesting place to be and this is looking like one hell of a season. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart