Strand visits an old friend, which goes about as well as you might expect. Morgan and Alicia meet a new friend, which goes better than you might expect.

Fear the Walking Dead is setting a very specific tone this year and so far it’s working well. Morgan and Alicia’s group are driving the primary mystery while Strand’s is exploring the reality of their HQ being taken from them without a shot being fired. Both are actually circling the same basic idea; that the world has in fact stopped ending and people are rebuilding. Which means this is when the trouble really starts.

For Strand that means a visit to the owner of a known resource dump, including a functional plane. It’s a nice touch that Al’s tapes are acting as a Domesday Book of sorts, mapping out what people have and where. That, along with Polar Bear’s network has the look of the basis of a new society of sorts and I’m looking forward to seeing how it plays out. This week, it does so with arguably the two best actors and characters on the show staring each other down. Ruben Blades is incredible as Daniel and there’s a sense not just of tension but confusion to his interactions with Colman Domingo’s always electric Strand. These are two legitimately bad men, finding themselves in a society which requires them to be anything but bad. It’s no wonder they have a confused and magnificently grumpy pseudo-friendship forming.

But the bulk of the episode’s heavy lifting is done by the other team this week. Not just in terms of a possible tie in to the upcoming Rick movies (after all, that symbol on Al’s map last week? Also on the side of the helicopter that took Rick) but in terms of moving the plot along. The feral kids are explored, we get some answers about just what’s going on, and we meet Grace, played by Karen David. The former Operations Manager for the local nuclear power plant, Grace has fought a one woman war to keep the place going and also to ‘save’ the walkers irradiated by it. Her origin story is delivered with the sort of pragmatic tragedy the show does well and she’s a welcome addition to the team, even if Morgan has lost his staff. At least for now.

Verdict: FTWD is doing everything right. The large cast are almost all engaged, the show is constantly pushing to explore new areas and there’s a real sense of a gear shift from survival horror to post-horror survival. Confident, urgent storytelling with a human, if ragged, edge this is another cracking episode from a consistently impressive series. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart