In a flashback we see Genet and Sabine worked at the Louvre the night the dead rose. In the present, everything comes to a head as Laurent’s ceremony begins, Isabelle, Daryl and Fallou stage a rescue and Carol meets Genet.

The pieces click into place in this episode and Lisa Zwerling’s script cleverly turns the core of the story into an examination of two very different women with very similar world traumas. Anne Charrier has been patiently waiting for her chance to shine and this episode is it. Genet and Sabine’s backstory, striking janitors at the Louvre who survive only by dint of being on the right side of the barriers, is a deeply Gallic one that takes in labour disputes, fine art and the clash between religion and reality. Genet loses everything she cared for and it breaks her to the point where all she has is her rage and her desire to make the world a better place. She won’t see the monstrous things she’s doing to enable that, instead just lashing out at a world that has only ever lashed out at her. Carol lost everything and everyone she cared for, more than once. The show has heavily implied that she’s isolated in the Commonwealth too, and the fact she upped sticks to travel across the world to find Daryl speaks to that. Genet is broken and refuses to see it. Carol is broken and can’t see past it. Their scenes together spark with tenson and understanding, easily some of the best work the show has done so far.

The other plot is a little less successful for a couple of odd reasons. The first is the offhand way that Sylvie is killed. Laika Blanc-Francard has done good work but her exit is one of the show’s rare fumbled action beats. She essentially throws herself, by accident, off the battlements at the Nest and it plays so odd, and flat, that it takes the episode a while to recover. Even when it does, the equally oddly flat nature of Isabelle’s capture feels a little more like architecture than character. Joel de la Fuente’s Losang hasn’t presented as a full-on villain before but torturing Isabelle, and the horrific use of Sylvie’s Hungry One form in Laurent’s ceremony, overshadows both that and Isabelle’s plot.

Verdict: The Nest plot doesn’t quite work for me, but the Carol and Genet plot does. Carol’s smart, deductive approach gets used again, Codron finally gets something to do this season, and the episode finishes on the sort of feverish post-apocalyptic cliffhanger the franchise has excelled at. All in all, very good, even with the missteps. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart