Fear The Walking Dead continues to strip away the dead wood, paring itself down into a show that some would say it should have been from the start.

While I often agreed with that sentiment during the plodding first season, the more I think about it the less it seems accurate. FTWD needed those early two years to work out not just what it was, but what it wasn’t. This isn’t a pale imitation of the core show, it’s not a story about the precise moment the world ended. Rather it’s a story about the terrible free fall that follows the apocalypse. This season in particular, each episode has interrogated not only the perceived and inherited wisdom of the past but the personal ethics of each character.

That’s never been truer than it is across these two episodes. ‘Minotaur’ brings the personality clash between Troy and the rest of the world to a head as, in the aftermath of the ‘suicide’ of his father, the Nation’s members finally join the ranch. It’s an instantly tense, instantly nasty clash that no one wants and no one can turn away from. Troy? Troy runs headlong at it.

Almost three-quarters of this episode is essentially a spotlight for Daniel Sherman and he absolutely revels in it. Sherman has been the show’s first truly memorable villain and he gets the chance to flex every muscle here. His maniacal joy at the thought of finally getting a good death is as terrifying as it is genuine and the middle act of this episode really feels like anything could happen. Frank Dillard does great work as Nick too, his clear terror a real indication that Nick is, for the first time in a long time, way out of his depth.

But it’s the closing scenes that are haunting here. Troy, exiled, finally gets everything he’s built up stripped away. No men, no armour, no weapons. Just a desperately broken, almost feral young man looking the only person he respects in the eyes and admitting the truth; he’s so tired. The final image, of Madison holding Troy at gunpoint as he walks off, is haunting and poetic in a manner that evokes the Old West. It’s also clearly not the last time we’ll see Troy, but that doesn’t matter. This is a definitive escalation, a moment the rest of the season will pivot around and both Kim Dickens and Daniel Sherman are extraordinary throughout.

‘The Diviner’ escalates that still further and also starts giving the second half of this season shape. Madison and Walker visit a local trading post for water and encounter Victor Strand. Alicia and Nick, left behind on the Ranch, find themselves on different sides of yet another burgeoning conflict.

The two plots here embody everything the show is doing right. Madison and Walker at the bazaar is a brilliant way of showing how the world has moved on that the core show has never touched. The bazaar is a gloriously Mad Max-esque environment, this weird combination of utterly mundane and deeply weird. The fact that Victor’s debt to ‘Procter John’ is never explained somehow makes it all the more realistic. There’s been talk of how Strand almost got a web series this year that would bridge the gap from when we last saw him to now and I honestly hope it happens. Colman Domingo is one of the best members of the cast and the show could absolutely stand a return visit to the bazaar.

Especially as we may not be back there for a while. The end of that plot sees Madison, Walker and Strand making their way to Daniel’s dam. Ofelia is back in play, Strand is back on the table and surely Luciana can’t be far behind. The show is very definitely bringing it’s plot strands together and doing so in a variety of really surprising, successful ways. Not the least of which is Madison’s ‘our children are still alive’ line to Victor and their moment of genuine intimacy.

But the real weight of the episode is carried by Nick and Alicia this week. Frank Dillane and Alycia Debnam-Carey do excellent work as two people working the same problem from very different angles. Alicia’s need to hold people together is both an emulation of and rebellion against her mother’s way of doing things. Nick’s reluctant embracing of his position as the militia’s Great White Hope is both due to what it does to his ego and a real sense that he’s the only one who can control them.

Neither is wrong. Neither is right enough.

At least, not alone.

The end of this episode is, I’d argue, the best closing sequence the show has ever done. With the Ranchers and the Nation all set for yet another, probably final, conflict, Nick sees his sister digging nearby. Earlier in the episode, Alicia sees a group of Nation members dousing for water. She joins them as her brother prepares to fight his ridiculous little war.

Then, he joins her.

Then the Nation.

Then the Ranchers.

It’s a simple, effective moment that any other show could have played as cheesy. Instead, here it’s pragmatic. There’s almost no chance they’ll find water but that isn’t the point. The point is they try and they do it together.

That’s an extraordinarily powerful way to close the episode and push the season along and it’s just the latest entry in a remarkable season.

Verdict: Fear The Walking Dead has never been better and somehow, it keeps improving. If you gave up on the show earlier, come back. If you’ve never seen it before, start with season 3, it’s worth it.

 Minotaur 9/10

The Diviner 9/10

Alasdair Stuart