Sarah sets off to find Wendell and runs across Josiah LaRoux, Emile’s twin brother. Josiah and Morgan have the confrontation they were always heading towards and the result is… surprising.

I don’t normally do this but this episode deals with subject matter a lot of folks find deeply traumatising. So, if animal injury is not something you’re comfortable with, skip the episode.

If you are okay with it, then this is a welcome return to form from last episode’s wobble. The small scale sets and unmistakeable air of artificiality are replaced by a functional two hander between Mo Collins’ Sarah and Demetrius Grosse’s second LaRoux brother of the show. We’ll get to him but first off Sarah, who is given space and time to shine here she should have got a long time ago. Collins is always excellent but is one of the people who sometimes gets overlooked in the show’s large and currently scattered cast. This episode that changes. She’s fiercely devoted to her brother, heartbroken at the thought of losing him and even more heartbroken at the thought of never knowing for sure. Her Pitbull-like determination matches Emile’s perfectly and the pair mesh in a way few double acts on these shows have. It’s not just their damage that’s complementary, they remind each other who they are, something all the harder to remember in the post-nuclear detonation the show is now set in. Emile reminds Sarah she’s a devoted sister and friend. Sarah reminds Emile he used to be one of the good guys. The park ranger turned bounty hunter is at heart still someone who brings them back alive, and the moment he helps Sarah through a panic attack is a real highlight here/

Demetrius Grosse’s physical presence is a big part of why this episode works. Big, calm, sad and determined he’s the rock everything else breaks against and you brace instinctively for things going bad when he and Morgan clash. They do, but not for who you expect.

For Rufus.

The best dog (aside from Dog on the core show) in the end of the world sacrifices himself for Emile and everything changes. Emile loses it, just starts sobbing and suddenly you remember these are people, living through the worst time imaginable and now, one of them has to watch his oldest friend die or help him find peace. It snaps Emile back to himself, snaps the show back to itself and to the core concept Al and Morgan especially orbit: people matter. Dogs too. Be kind.

That makes Strand’s preening cameo at the end, and his refusal to let Wendell out without locking him out forever arguably the worst thing the character’s done in a season or so. Victor is alone in his head, and hates it there. Everyone else has almost nothing, but they at least have more than that and he hates them for it even more than he does himself. The war that’s coming is going to end a lot of these characters’ stories I suspect and Victor is assuredly one of them. But not before a blaze of the closest he can get to glory. Ranged against that, Sarah and Emile’s quiet determination to keep going, to build homes on their pain instead of a throne like Victor’s isn’t just kind, it’s courageous.

Verdict: Measured, calm, with a barnstorming pair of performances at its heart. Another great episode of a great season. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart