We find out what happened to Alicia over the last couple of months. None of it is good. Morgan and Alicia discover the truth about PADRE. Also, war.

This is a hard watch in the best way. As mid-season finales go it’s fantastic and as what looks like the first act of the series finale it’s possibly even better.

The split timeline Goldberg & Chambliss have played with all season pays off here as we spend time with the show’s original survivor, Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) as she struggles to cope with being imprisoned by Teddy. This being Alicia, she doesn’t actually struggle that much at all, both thanks to her presence being expected and the fact she has no tolerance for other people’s nonsense. Her situation is helped even further by her meeting Will (Gus Halper) and his reveal that he’s a former senatorial aide whose boss was sent details of PADRE. It turns out PADRE is an ark of sorts, designed to ensure the survival of the country whose location was sent to a select few. Including Will’s boss. In short order, Will and Alicia work out how to get out. In short order too, Alicia finds herself in a partially collapsed drain with the reanimated corpse of Will’s boss. As Will struggles to get through to her, the Empty gets there first;

And bites her.

This is intercut with Morgan and Alicia following the Empty in the present day, as Alicia is absolutely convinced elements of the Empty’s brain survive death and he knows the way to PADRE. Morgan, who lost his child because of this exact belief, is as horrified as he is sympathetic as Alicia constantly ‘saves’ the Empty from final death. Until, in a struggle with Strand’s men and to stop them killing it, she lets it bite her:

In the artificial arm she’s had since the first bite.

We’re still reeling from all of this when it becomes clear that firstly the Empty has no idea where PADRE is and secondly, Alicia is dying. She didn’t self-amputate fast enough, is racked with fever, has tried every drug she has and is only hanging on through sheer force of will. Sooner or later, she’ll turn and she’s frantic about discovering PADRE before she does.

This is big, even if the show has a couple of ways out of it. Those options first: Alicia was sprayed with radioactive blood a couple of seasons ago and that may have done something to her system to ‘contain’ the virus. Alternately, as Will points out, she may just be sick. She cut off her own arm in a drain next to a corpse. She’s barely eaten or slept in weeks. Of course she’s exhausted, of course she’s in pain. Or she could be dying and the show could be saying goodbye to both its surviving original characters this season.

Because make no mistake, war is coming and it’s not between the people we thought it was. Debnam-Carey does fantastic work here, simultaneously driven and terrified and pre-emptively stricken with grief. She and Lennie James spark off each tremendously well and her scenes with Will actually retroactively make us like him even more. Halper’s idealistic, driven young aide was the hero the show didn’t know it deserved and his death remains one of Victor’s most cruel decisions. It may also be the decision that ends him.

The ending here is one of those moments where the show’s direction, script and performances meld beautifully. As Strand, again, pushes them to breaking point, Alicia notices an Empty nearby and goes to end it. It’s Will. She confronts Strand and, in a beat that explains why Coleman Domingo is one of the best in the business, he shifts from lying to acceptance to embracing his monstrous nature once again. Faced by the one person he still loves seeing him at his worst, Victor doubles down and revels in his atrocity. And Alycia Debnam-Carey’s sunken eyes burning tells him that they are going to war.

Verdict: The end game for the season, and perhaps the show, is here. If Alicia really is dying ultimately doesn’t matter. What does is that Victor has finally found the opponent and fight he’s desperately wanted. What he loves has returned to him and it’s coming for his head. I for one wouldn’t bet against her. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart