In the present, the survivors go to war against each other and the hordes of charred Walkers in the Stadium. In the past, Madison has a conversation that surprises her almost as much as the person she’s talking to.

I’m calling it, this is the best season this show has ever done. It’s also, currently, in the Top 3 best seasons any iteration of The Walking Dead has done. The twinned timelines, the exploration of hope versus destruction and the show’s view of human nature have never been more piercing than they are here.

Timelines first. The reveal that Madison and Al met could, so easily, have been a ‘My mother’s name was Martha too’ moment (athough as a sidebar, don’t get me started on how that stopped being anything other than a cheap punchline a loooooooong time ago). Instead, here, it serves as a demonstration of just how fractured humanity is now. Life is a car, a gun, a box of shitty kimchi at a time. There’s no time for anything else. No capacity to trust anything else.

Which is why Al’s speech here hits so hard. Not just because of what’s happened to her but because of what she’s trying to hold together. Stories are the connective tissue that doesn’t rot, and Al’s obsessive devotion to her tapes is proof of how firmly she believes that. I’d love to see those tapes become the basis of a society too. Or, perhaps, be a McGuffin in the 2030s sequel series that’s surely on the cards.

It’s also why Morgan and Morgan’s arc is so important. His very presence in the series, as well as that of the survivor groups, is proof that the world is larger than Alicia and her team’s bleak quest for vengeance. As are those stories.

And the stories are what this episode continually orbits. Madison and Al’s friendship, Madison re-united with her family in the bleak wasteland between seasons 3 and 4. Madison leading the dead into the stadium, giving her life so her kids, and the people she barely knows, can live. No One’s Gone, because as long as our actions keep others alive, we live too.

Kim Dickens is fantastic this week as she’s been all season. Often the least well served cast member, Dickens’ Madison has grown over the last two seasons into a complex, nuanced and driven leader. She’s compassionate, helpful, literally to the death. She’s the leader Rick has often, but not always, been. She’s the leader we hope Maggie will be given a chance to become on her final episodes of the core show. She’ll be sorely missed.

But the rest of the cast will be just fine. Alycia Debnam-Carey is especially great in a vastly strong cast this week. She’s dead-eyed, furious, heartbroken and terrifying. Her confrontation with Morgan is the best work she’s ever done on the show and some of Lennie James’ best too. This is going to be a very, very different show without Madison, or Nick, but with her front and centre, along with the always excellent James, Colman Domingo, Garret Dillahunt, Maggie Grace, Danai Garcia and Jenna Elfman on board this may be the best iteration of casts either Walking Dead show has ever had.

But this is all technicalities. What these shows come down to, even under the grimdark, prepper stylings they sometimes buckle under, is hope. Hope defined in living another day, meeting someone new. Hope embodied in Strand handing Charlie, then June, then the others some of the food Madison and Al traded. Hope pointed straight at tomorrow, and at the next half of the season. And as long as there’s hope, no one’s gone. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart