Will (Gus Halper), makes his way alone across the nuclear wasteland that the countryside has become. He gets lucky, and is picked up by the soldiers of newly minted warlord Victor Strand. Then, his luck starts to run out.

It’s interesting to note, now The Walking Dead is three shows wide and growing, that there’s a favourite move all three shows have now done: split the party. Just like Iris and Hope have been the focus of two separate plots in World Beyond, and the hunting party and Alexandria’s residents have been split in the core show, this episode focuses on a vanishingly small part of the cast. In fact, it pretty much focuses on Colman Domingo’s Victor Strand.

This is very, very good news.

Domingo, who burned the screen in the middle of a fantastic cast in Nia DaCosta’s phenomenal Candyman earlier this year, has been with the show from the end of the first season. In that time we’ve seen Strand as a stereotypical hustler, a businessman, a grieving widow, stalwart friend and, at last, as a monster. There’s something Shakespearean about this last Strand, Domingo wearing an old school military uniform and wielding a civil war cavalry sabre as he lords it over a tower block kingdom spared fallout from the blasts by providence and luck. He’s flamboyant, benevolent, ruthless and it turns out, incredibly, heartbreakingly sad. Victor Strand has it all aside from Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), his oldest friend, functional daughter and occasional foe. He wants nothing more than to see her again. The reasons why change hour by hour seemingly but boil down to one single thing: Victor has decided he’s damned. And sometimes he decides to have a little fun with that fact.

This plot harmonizes surprisingly well with the way Ted Lasso season 2 explores toxic masculinity through one particular character. However where AppleTV’s second breakthrough is defined by kindness, Fear is defined by incredible sadness. Domingo’s Strand is a vast presence and a broken man, lording it over a radioactive wasteland. The reveal at the end of the episode, that he’s salvaged a lighthouse beacon to drive people away from him, is one of the saddest beats the show has ever produced. His final scene with Will, one of its most disturbing.

Let’s talk about Will for a second. Gus Halper carries the entire show on his back for the first fifteen minutes or so of the show and does so basically in silence. We see Will hide from biohazard suited raiders, fight off radioactive dead and, briefly safe by a campfire, break down and sob. We don’t even know his name at this point and we’re watching this man just come apart at the seams. When a Walker is inevitably attracted to the noise, Will… waits.  It’s a subtle beat, not overplayed, but this is a man about to end it all because he can’t take any more. His rescue corrects that but the show’s bravery, and honesty, in seeing a character pushed that far has to be both commented on and applauded for its compassion and honesty. Nothing is easy in this world and seeing someone react to that is a fiercely strong jolt of instant empathy.

The fact he’s a man of mystery helps too. Will seems to know who Alicia is, seems to be where he is on her orders and if so the show is setting up a fascinating four way conflict. We know Morgan and co are okay and the posters are setting up a war between Morgan and Strand. But if Alicia has people too, and the scavengers who cleared out her old hideout are a fourth group? It’s going to be a crowded wasteland. At least for a while.

Verdict: This is just really, really strong TV drama. The only thing that surprises me more than Fear The Walking Dead reinventing itself brilliantly, twice, is how little it seems to have been noticed. Bleak, tragic, brutal and unforgettable. Welcome to the year of Strand. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart