Maggie, Michonne, Enid and Rosita meet a seemingly impossible offer. Simon and Dwight wake up. Negan and Rick have an unusually meaningful exchange of views and blows.

This episode does the impossible. Three times.

The first impossibility is that Rick and Negan are interesting this week. Rick, who still has so little sense of what his son asked of him with his last words that Carl may as well have been speaking Esperanto, gets closer than ever to killing Negan this week. He separates the man from his troops, throws him into a cellar full of Walkers and beats him with his own, now flaming, baseball bat.

Negan of course escapes, or rather Rick is forced to flee. But what could have been the absolute worst kind of serial storytelling tapdance in place is, instead, a focus and escalation of the main conflict. Negan’s right: Rick is out of control and unable to defend anyone. Rick’s right: Negan is lying to himself about everything. The two men are damaged in similar ways that have led them to entirely different locations and it makes for a confrontation that’s electric in a way no previous scene between since the first has been. This feels dangerous, and even, in a way nothing that preceded it did. The visual of Rick lighting Lucille on fire (with Glen’s lighter apparently) says it all. The balance has shifted. And it may very well not shift back. Even the ending of this plot line works: Rick forced to flee, Negan in the custody of Jadis (who hates them both don’t forget) and Simon and Dwight in charge of the Saviors.

Well, mostly Simon. Because he’s the second impossibility. He’s interesting. He’s nuanced. He expresses an emotion or two beyond over articulate machismo. I know right?!

And that isn’t a slam on Steven Ogg, who’s a great actor. Rather, Simon and Gavin were the characters that suffered the most from the Saviors being one-note stereotypes. This week? Out the window. Simon’s point about the show’s leads is very sensible: the Saviors have thrown everything they have at them. They haven’t quit. What’s it going to take? In that single moment, the character transitions from tedious mouthpiece to Shakespearean and it’s a wonder to see. Especially as he instantly uses Negan’s apparent death to take control of the Saviors and is all but certain to not hand it back. And given he didn’t tell Negan he killed them all and Jadis doesn’t know that wasn’t Negan’s plan, things are going to get very interesting for everyone in that plot very soon now.

The third impossibility is the best one. Hope. A request is discovered which leads the Bechdel passing women of Hilltop to make a call; they’re given coordinates and the offer of a deal. Rick wouldn’t approve but as Michonne points out, he’ll understand eventually.

And so, to the sound of the show’s best characters working around its lead, they go and discover Georgie, played by Jayne Atkinson. She’s well dressed, polite, well armed and well fed. And she wants to help.

And none of them buy it. The scenes that follow, especially the final moment with Enid, are heartbreaking and very much under Carl Grimes’ shadow. Georgie wants to help, so of course they don’t believe her. Of course they think about taking her supplies. And, of course, they don’t.

Because in the end, even after everything these characters have been through, they’re good people. And in Georgie (who may or may not be the head of 50,000 strong group the Commonwealth in the comics), they’ve got something extraordinary: an ally who is kind, generous and wants to help. The nature of that help, and her instant friendship with Maggie, are breaths you didn’t the show was holding finally being released. There is hope. There is life beyond the war. And it’s on the way.

At this stage it’s a dead heat whether the characters or the viewers are more relieved by that. Regardless, this, along with the helicopter a couple of weeks ago, feels like the show breaking stride after a season too long in the mud with the Saviors.

Verdict: Compassionate, brutal, honest and humane this is one of the best episodes of the season to date. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart