Carol and Morgan go looking for Henry. Rick goes looking for blood. Negan finds a moment of peace.

Good news everyone! The lights are back on this week! After the dismal previous episode this still has some issues but the show is definitely back on track.

Issues first off, though eh? They’ve finally expressed the fact that Rick is engaged in a roaring rampage of revenge perfectly designed to not be what Carl wanted. It’s a bit late, to say the least, but the show pointing out Rick has jumped the rails helps immensely. It also leads to the off ramp for Morgan whose last hurrah with his murder buddy is eliminating the Saviors who escaped last week. We still don’t know for sure if Morgan dies and his Fear The Walking Dead role is a flashback or not but honestly, it’s not looking that way. Morgan has been increasingly disgusted with how things are for a while and he’s pretty ready to leave this week.

That’s interesting. The Rick stuff isn’t so much. The 450,000th conversation about bullets this season? Kill us now. Although it does make sense that this would be on everyone’s minds and it’s always nice to see Daryl and Tara get stuff to do. Likewise Carol and Ezekiel who take advantage of this pause of sorts in the weirdly paced war to actually have some conversations.

Oh and remember the massively hateful long-haired Savior who killed Henry’s brother? The guy who literally every time he opens his mouth you want to insert an entire other character in there, sideways?

Dead at last! Woooooooooooooooooooo!

All of this is either interesting or fun. What’s flat out brilliant is the clash between Negan and Jadis. I have made no secret of the fact that I dislike Negan, intensely, in both forms. In the comics he’s a means of indulging every single one of Kirkman’s worst impulses In the series, especially at first, he was a single-note character that set the tone for a never ending parade of crushingly dull Saviors, and wasted Jeffrey Dean Morgan in a buzzword spouting non-role.

Yeah not so much. The total emotional honesty he’s forced into here shows just how much Morgan has been in idle up to now. This is Negan not just as monster but as victim, a man who in a position of vulnerability has no issue facing that. The fact he’s genuinely sorry about the massacre of Jadis’ people is especially brilliant, as it casts him, at last, as a hero in his own mind. He’s a monster, sure, but here, at last he’s a monster with context. Plus the running gag of ‘No, seriously, what the shit?’ is weirdly adorable. Also Pollyanna McIntosh continues to be one of the best elements of this show and, almost silent here, is on top form. Also who is Jadis?! How can she call a helicopter?! And odds are, a helicopter not from Maggie’s new friend a couple of weeks back.

Verdict: Ending on a dark but cautiously hopeful note, this is the show steering onto its final approach. It’s been a hell of a rocky flight but it’s back on an even keel. Here’s hoping they stay the course for the next two weeks. 7/10

Alasdair Stuart