The Commonwealth newcomers do some community service, discover the rot at the heart of the city and fall foul of it wanting to have a date near the rot at the edge of the city. Daryl continues to steer Leah towards something approaching goodness. Maggie has a terrible, good idea. Negan is fiercely honest.

Remember last time we talked about how the show is drawing everything together? That continues this week on two levels: the personal and the structural. Let’s do personal first because this episode is full of moments where longstanding plot threads are brought up, progressed then folded into the ongoing tapestry. The most obvious of these is Daryl and Leah’s past relationship and how she’s clearly becoming more and more aware of what the Reapers are. This is vintage Walking Dead, Daryl never shying away from the terrible things he’s done but also never for a second believing they damn him. Because they don’t. He’s holding the door open for Leah and seeing her walk through it will, I suspect, be the start of the endgame for Pope and his group of special ops murderers.

Ezekiel and Yumiko get similar moments. Ezekiel’s cancer is continuing to progress until a request is passed up the line for him to be treated. He is, and returns ebullient, brimming with painkillers and carefully not talking about how he really feels. This is a really smart, efficient piece of storytelling as not only does Princess make it clear she knows Ezekiel is seriously ill but, even living somewhere with actual hospitals, Ezekiel seems to be in denial. In fact, denial seems to be the dominant emotion of the Commonwealth as Yumiko’s brother is arrested for the crime of… wanting people to not know he’s a doctor. Yumiko meanwhile tries to see the President and has a glorious moment of existential horror waiting in an office reading a magazine for the first time in a decade or so. A meeting that’s ultimately cancelled because someone has attacked her son.

My friends, the biggest asshole in the series has logged on.

In the comics, Sebastian Milton, played with exuberant WASPery here by Teo Rapp-Olsson is the final villain and one who gouges a mark into the series. Here, for now at least, he looks like he wants to find a community centre to bulldoze. He’s cheerfully, joyously awful and Eugene, completely reasonably, punches him in the face. Thus getting in even. More. Trouble.

Oh and just to top it all off, Maggie and Negan finally talk about him brutally murdering her husband and Maggie decides the best possible way to save the day is by emulating the Whisperers. In two of the best scenes the show has produced in a long time, we see her and her nemesis come to an accord of sorts. Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan are effortlessly great and the only thing better than Negan admitting that if he had the chance he’d have killed all of them and not just Glenn and Abraham is chilling in its honesty and pragmatism. Worse is both Maggie’s horrified response and the fact that… you can see why Negan thinks that way. He’s still a monster, the show has never lost sight of that, but he knows what he is and he’s curiously concerned about Maggie becoming the same thing. Negan tutoring her in how to be a Whisperer is weirdly sweet too, even if the process is horrific. It does lead too to one of the best endings this season; Negan, Gabriel, Maggie and Elijah (Okea Eme-Akwari) leading a herd to storm Meridian.

Walking next to Elijah’s dead sister.

Throw in Gabriel being unable to kill a praying Reaper and you have an episode made of small choices and big consequences. The vast scope of this season is still stretching the show but this week especially every element feels well served, explored and progressed. The first season 11 finale is next week and I have no idea how it’s going to go.

Verdict: This could so easily be a show resting on its laurels. Instead it’s using its past to build its future. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart