There are two things The Walking Dead does better than anyone else; episodes about troubled mentors and Carol and Daryl being the world’s most brutally capable old married couple.

That’s all this episode is. Oh aside from The Secret Origin of DOG! So it’s fair to say if you expect me to have enjoyed it, you’re on the right lines

The clever thing about the episode is the way it leans into both the new status quo of the show and the real world. In the real world, season 10c was constructed of small casts, small groups, and small crews to keep risk to a minimum. In the world, the episode leans into Daryl’s literal years in the wilderness as first he and Carol set off hunting and second, they unwittingly discover someone Daryl knows all too well.

This is the show both housekeeping and setting out its stall for the future, as Carol’s good natured hectoring turns into something rather more honest, tired and venomous on the return serve. Carol is devious, brilliant, principled and has no concept of when to stop. Daryl’s sick of it and the episode actually finishes with the pair of them apparently breaking up. It’s a moment of delicious uncertainty couched in bleak certainty; the two oldest friends and not quite lovers on the show sick of not quite being on the same page. Of literally, as we see here, being on different sides of the river. It’s also just one of a string of heart-breaking moments, whether it’s Daryl explaining he was searching for the body of his ‘brother’, Carol explaining that the Kingdom needs her and Daryl’s loaded comment about moving on or newcomer Leah (played superbly by Lynn Collins), explaining how she came to be where they are. The episode is three people wide, only ever has two on screen at a time and aches with words unsaid in a world where people can never quite say enough. It’s bleak and romantic, tragic and brutal. I told you were they were really good at this sort of story.

Verdict: Ending on that note of uncertainty too means that, presumably, we’ll be here in season 11 when the story returns to Carol and Daryl (and maybe Leah). It’s going to be a long wait but, if the rest of 10c is this good, not a dull one for sure. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart