Carol and Ash are reunited and Ash is furious about being lied to. Losang storms the Demimonde. People make plans to go home.

Given we’ve got an episode of the season left it’s a surprise to see everything bar the plane ticket wrapped up this episode. That being said it continues this season’s trend of feeling both measured and dense. There’s a lot going on here and it’s all pretty good, the Carol and Daryl plot in particular which sees the pair fall back into their old instinctive partnership even as Daryl keeps zoning out through grief. There’s some interesting ground put between them here, both through Daryl’s trauma and Carol’s deception of Ash. They’re on the same page, travelling in the same direction but not as close as they think.

The same could be said about Ash and Carol. Ash has been unusually badly served in his first season, functionally disappearing for the middle of the season. The season more than makes up for lost time here as Anish Patel gets to have some fun action beats and a season highlight scene with Carol. The action involves a traumatised, dehydrated Ash trapped in a car surrounded by Hungry Ones and an inventively horrific use of Genet’s ‘Amper’ serum by Daryl. Daniel Percival shoots the sequence like something from Children of Man, entirely inside the car as it becomes more and more covered with gore. It’s a really fun, pulpy touch and the action this episode is all great. The closing boss fights between Codron and Jacinta, Losang’s second, and Daryl and Losang are almost medieval in their inventive nastiness. Daryl beats Isabelle’s murderer to death with a human skull in the Paris catacombs while Codron bounces Jacinta around in a nicely choreographed ‘big and slow and hard to kill’ vs ‘small and fast and hard to catch’ fight. It’s fun, gnarly stuff even if Losang’s sideways crash into fundamentalism never quite landed for me.

But the heart of the episode is an exchange between Daryl and Laurent and that scene between Carol and Ash. The former is a moment of brutal emotional honesty as Laurent learns about his aunt’s death and decides he can’t go to America because everyone he loves dies. The survivor’s guilt on the poor kid is epic and Louis Puech Scigliuzzi and Norman Reedus do great work as two men in two different times of life realising how similar their damage is. These seasons are so short that it’s become easy to forget Laurent is a child. We’re reminded here and the episode is better for it.

Carol’s emotional arc this season has been really surprising, because it’s been painfully honest. Melissa McBride is an exceptional actress and the work she does here is especially impressive as we see Carol battle with happiness, survivor’s guilt and a newfound sense of the mark she leaves on the world. Ash is crushed that she lied to him and worse, manipulated him. So is Carol herself, and Anish Patel and McBride play the mutual respect and hurt with raw honesty. The day is saved, or saved enough and now the cost comes due.

This is all good fun and the episode crams even more in including a tie off for Fallou’s plot and a return to the Demimonde nightclub from the first season.. There’s also a lovely callback to Genet’s past as we see the Mona Lisa placed in the Demimonde. Status symbol or symbol of the newly egalitarian France? Time will tell. Honestly I hope we get to see it to.

Verdict: This season has made some big choices and with the exception of last week’s horrendous bodycount, it’s all paid off. One more episode to go. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart