Hilltop suffers a suspicious disaster. Lydia pays the price for that suspicion and when Negan steps in, so does he.

Cassady McClincy has been one of the best elements of this cast from the moment she arrived and this episode gives her a spotlight she richly deserves. Lydia is murderously angry, terrified, desperate to trust someone and ready to kill. She embodies the Alexandria Problem; they help whoever needs it, regardless. She’s their best choice and worst choice writ large and this episode, all a lot of people can see is the worst choice. Their enemy, living among them. Their enemy, patiently waiting for them to slip up. No wonder she and Negan get on so well.

What makes this episode work is its inevitability; someone was always coming for Lydia, it was just a matter of who and when. What makes it fly is how despite that inevitability, no one is able to stop it. Lydia defends herself, Negan defends her and one of the bullies ends up dead. Just as Negan predicted earlier, the settlement turns on the easiest target. But this time? He isn’t going to be there to get hit. Which will only make him look guiltier. Which he, of course, knows, but doesn’t care about.

What really works about this episode is the way Geraldine Iona’s script focuses on this justifiable paranoia and shows how close it is to the truth. Alpha absolutely has been waging quiet war on the colonies for months, the tree collapse is down to her and every other colony is suffering similar, insidious, invisible attacks.

Arguably the episode’s masterstroke however, is the way in which it takes these two elements and explores what happens outside them. Michonne’s chance meeting with Ezekiel is the only thing that saves his life and the sight of the former monarch preparing to end his life is genuinely heartbreaking. Ezekiel feels like he has no one and nothing and, with the ever present weight of horror and violence pressing down on them, he wants a way out, any way out. The way he’s talked down is poignant, compassionate and real even if it doesn’t connect to the rest of the episode directly. Because thematically, it absolutely does; a moment of painful personal choice, only this time, one altered for the better by others. He’s still in trouble, but now, at least, he isn’t alone.

Verdict: Tough, uncompromising and inevitable, this is a tragedy that fits the show like a glove. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart