Strand and Alicia are sent to deal with an unusually sticky problem.

The fact our large cast has been split up in season 6 allows for some individual character studies and it’s already paying off. After last week’s stunning deep dive into the man Morgan is becoming, Lennie James steps behind the camera for this equally impressive episode that spotlights Strand and Alicia.

They, along with Daniel, are the last of the old guard and what this episode makes clear is that Strand desperately wants to be better than he is and is terrified he can’t be. Daniel’s exhortation to ‘remember who you are’ last season rings increasingly true this week as he finds himself faced with three impossible dilemmas at once.

The first is whether to rebel. The entire episode is spent trying to kill a gloriously oleaginous Walker herd covered in molasses in a room where Virginia is keeping a ‘weapon’. Strand and Alicia are used to this sort of thing and set up a clever ‘cattle run’ idea that enables them to take the herd out a few at a time. It, mostly, works and that leads to Strand’s other two problems.

Virginia’s weapon is, it’s revealed, them. The situation was designed to allow leaders to emerge because Virginia is building an army. Strand, and to a lesser extent, Alicia, win. This is everything Strand always wanted; respectability, power, the licence to behave badly. He wins and that’s the worst thing that could happen to him.

Because the last dilemma is whether or not to save everyone and Strand makes that decision without blinking an eye. He sacrifices another prisoner to distract the herd, lies about it and worst of all, everyone believes him. Even Alicia.

But not Strand. He knows exactly who he is, and exactly what he is. He knows that having Alicia next to him isn’t enough to stop that. He knows he’s a danger and so he sends Alicia away and awaits whatever comes next. Which is also what we wants, because Strand is a Shakespearean villain who knows what he is and is in the end, okay with that. It’s an extraordinary turn by Colman Domingo and a bleak twin to last week’s episode. There, Morgan was reborn in trauma. Here, Strand is cocooned inside it.

He’s the breakout here but he’s not the only star. Alice Debnam-Carey continues to be the quiet heart of the show as the last surviving Clark-Manama. She finishes the episode, as Strand does, alone. But because of Strand she also finishes it, perhaps, with a chance. They have a new friend in Virginia’s younger sister and while they’re separate they’re also everywhere in Virginia’s domain. And if war is coming, they’ll need to be.

Even then the episode isn’t quite done. Daniel, initially shown to be an amnesiac following a punishment beating, is in fact nothing of the sort. The most dangerous barber left on Earth has all his faculties, all his skills and is working for the all new Morgan. Virginia may be in charge but she’s not in control. And the season is only just getting started.

Verdict: Taut, character focused and urgent, this is another great episode of the Walking Dead universe’s oddest and still most interesting show. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

Click here for Alasdair’s review of the season opener