Daryl and Alpha battle to the near death, as Beta pays a visit to Alexandria.

This is one of those episodes we get every now and then with The Walking Dead. It isn’t bad by any means but there’s a sense of the show running in place. As a result, what should be high stakes is anything but.

That’s especially true of the Beta plot which requires us to believe Dante was able to dig a tunnel stable and large enough for a man Beta’s size to walk through it without anyone seeing him do it. Oh this tunnel opens up under a grave in Alexandria and extends, conservatively, a mile.

If you remember, Dante was not in town long when he was revealed.

It’s a weird beat and not the only one. Time, especially when the show does this thing of lots of episodes overlapping, is very weird here. There’s a reference to the Dante incident only being a couple of days ago which feels incredibly jarring. Likewise, the reveal at the end feels like it would have been more earned if more time had passed. Like I say, nothing’s bad but nothing is quite as good as the show thinks it is.

The same is especially true of the main plot. The fight between Daryl and Alpha is a nicely brutal bit of choreography that sees the two characters tear lumps off each other with no quarter asked or given. But the placement of the episode, again, mitigates the urgency. If this was a mid season break or the run up to a finale it would feel far more significant. Here it feels, again, muted.

But there is some good news. Morton and Reedus are excellent and the fight is actually a smart character exploration, both of just how desperate Daryl can be and how calculated Alpha always is. Likewise the exploration of Rosita’s PTSD and Gamma’s growing realisation that they’ve all been lied to. That last one is especially good, given it allows the show a chance to explore what it means for our lead characters to be a society rather than an isolated group. The show, and the franchise, are evolving and this sort of ‘what happens after the world ends’ story is exactly what they should be exploring. Its just that, when married as it is here, to the serial format it feel a little slow.

Verdict: Action heavy, character heavy but significance light (or it seems to be) this isn’t a bad episode. But the show is capable of far more. 7/10

Alasdair Stuart