Spoilers!

We follow Daryl after the rout two weeks ago. He and Dog meet an old friend and they discover that old friend has made some pretty terrible life choices.

First off, the ‘spotlight’ during the fight is a lovely visual conceit and a really smart way to let us know who each episode will focus on. Last week we saw everything from Maggie’s point of view, including Daryl running off into the woods in pursuit of a Reaper. This week? It’s Mama Dixon’s favourite son’s turn. That’s always good news for this show given just how good Norman Reedus is at, well, everything and this week’s episode is no exception. Especially as he has backup.

First off, Lyn Collins, one of those prolific actresses who has patiently waited for a breakout role for years and has been in at least three things you’ve seen. Her return as Leah is the best sort of twist – one that makes sense just as it happens and it gives her relationship with Darryl an entirely new level. These are two people steeped in violence and blood who have found something close to peace with each other and in Leah’s case, willingly surrendered that peace. It’s clear she loves Darryl, it’s very possible he loves her. But Collins’ effortless authority and controlled exhaustion haunts the episode at least as much as it does Darryl himself. Leah is very tired, very scared and only knows what she’s chosen to hang onto since society fell. Her old military unit. Her old mercenary unit. Her family. The Reapers.

This is how you escalate a villain and it’s worth putting the Reapers next to Alpha and the Whisperers and Negan and the Saviors. The Saviors were just genial psychopaths, diesel-powered Vikings who wanted some semblance of normality. They were, in context, hopelessly naïve. Alpha and the Whisperers were so traumatized by the world around them they embraced it, a curdled evolution of society where brutality was punctuation but where the love at the heart of it was familial and real and that somehow made it all worse.

The Reapers are, by some distance, the most dangerous of all of them. Because the Reapers think they’re on a holy mission. The show’s first religious post-apocalyptic death cult have their origin explained by leader Pope, played with clenched Southern brimstone by Ritchie Coster. Coster, best known to me as Blacklist villain Anslo Garrick, is one part Alpha and one part Negan. His fondness for mutilation as justice is Negan all the way but his belief that his unit have been chosen by God is the sort of self-delusion Alpha would nod approvingly at. Then probably set fire to someone, just like Pope does. He’s absolutely a hypocrite, absolutely what happens when PTSD runs rampant for 12 years of societal collapse and absolutely the Negan to Darryl’s Rick. On one side, violence as devotion. On the other, family. The show’s core conflict has never felt more personal, or more charged, than it does right now and that’s entirely down to the clever escalation of threat and the three powerhouse core performances.

Verdict: A gear change for a strong season and a promise of stronger to come. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart