Six weeks after being shot by Virginia, Morgan is hiding in a water tower, waiting for the mysterious benefactor who dressed his wound to return and not entirely sure he’s still alive. But Virginia needs to know if Morgan is alive or dead and she’s not concerned which she gets. Which is why she sends bounty hunter Emile Laroux after him.

Walking Dead shows work best in two modes. The first is the chosen family mass ensemble, which Fear did such a great job with last season. The second is the zeroed in hyper focused character study. ‘Here’s Not Here’, a strong contender for the best episode the show has produced to date was one of these, focusing on how Morgan Jones (Lennie James) got the coping skills he needed to survive the impossible tragedy that defined the first stage of the apocalypse for him.

This episode is, in many ways, a thematic sequel to that. Writers Andrew Chambliss & Ian Goldberg sensibly put Lennie James front and centre throughout and at no point does he do anything besides excel. Morgan is so badly injured, the bullet wound from last season now gangrenous, that he’s not fully alive. He can walk with impunity among the dead and Isaac, the former marine combat medic who finds him realizes he can use that. Isaac, like everyone in this neck of the woods, is either working for Virginia (the fanastic Colby Minifie) or has escaped from working for her. He has a pregnant wife, a hideout he can’t access without getting through the dead and now, a chance. Michael Abott Jr gives Isaac the exhausted principles of Rick Grimes on one of his hard days. He’s a genuinely good man and as the episode closes we find out how good but he’s also a soldier; pragmatic where Virginia is calculated and he uses Morgan as much as she does.

The difference is, he gives Morgan two things in return: perspective and hope. Isaac’s hideout is a valley which has been revealed after a nearby dam broke. It’s almost impregnable, a perfect spot for Morgan and his chosen family to regroup. But to get there, Morgan has to want to live and that leads to two pivotal action sequences. In the first, Isaac uses him to get through the barricade of the dead and then risks his own life to save him when he falls. In the second, the episode’s other principal guest star rides into battle against the pair of them and is defeated by that simple fact of two people working together.

Demtrious Grosse is an incredible physical presence and a jovial point of calm in the dusty hell of the show. Emile Laroux, his character has a hat, an axe, a dog and a cheerful willingness to work for who’s paying. He’s ruthless where the other two are desperate and the closing fight demonstrates that. Demetrious puts both men down, refuses to stay down himself and becomes the catalyst Morgan needed. Wounded, desperate and realizing he wants to live, he kills and beheads the bounty hunter. Then he takes his hat, axe, horse and dog (AWWWW!) and mails his head to Virginia. Morgan Jones, he explains to her over the walkie-talkie, is dead. She’s dealing with someone else now.

Verdict: Morgan’s desire to live, Isaac’s willingness to sacrifice everything and Virginia’s need for control collide and the end result is an episode which is calm, measured, kind and brutal. The lasting effects on Morgan remain to be seen. What’s clear is that this is a show working on a wider canvas this year and already welcoming the space. Plus the closing scene reveals drastic environmental change, as two new characters are found spraying graffiti on what seems to be a beached nuclear submarine. Answers to that are forthcoming. The answer we have now is this: Fear the Walking Dead is back. And the season is off to a great start. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart