The fair arrives, the compact is signed…

If you wanted a textbook demonstration of everything I love about this show, then it’s this episode. Grace note after grace note, whether it’s Judith and Jerry paying together, the statue of Shiva or the reconciliation of Rosita and Eugene. every single character gets a moment. Every character needs one, because a large proportion of them aren’t standing by the end of the episode.

If you wanted a textbook demonstration of everything people hate about this show, then it’s this episode. A villain defined by performative nihilism, a seemingly malicious joy in taking characters apart both physically and psychologically. A libertarian hymn to individualism with no one singing in the same key. The Old West done different and better.

The last ten minutes of the episode are, by far, the hardest to watch. There’s a moment where it all threatens to slip into self parody as Daryl and Carol’s team labour up a windswept hillside and we see the line of heads marking the new border. They’re helpfully arranged in ascending order of significance (OZZY! We barely knew you!) and by the time the dead are revealed, the lead characters are crouched and small, bent double by grief and horror at the size of the crime committed against them.

But what wrecks you is what follows. Siddiq, and Avi Nash is fantastic this week, holding the final minutes on his shoulders and cracking voice, is left alive by Alpha to tell the story of the murders. Instead, he does the one thing that every character in this show has in common; he snatches hope from hopelessness. He turns Alpha’s weapon, the story, on her. He rescues his friends the only way he can; by telling the story of their final minutes. We see Ozzy and the Highwaymen stage a heroic, and doomed, rescue attempt. We see Tara and Naddy and the others fighting to survive. We see Enid, fists bunched, dwarfed by the man coming to kill her, not backing down. We see Alpha and her faceless minions, watching, expressionless.

It’s brave and futile, beautiful and tragic. It’s also, and the show is careful to let us draw this conclusion ourselves, absolutely unverifiable. An inspiring banner for the communities to rally underneath, a final heroic dash. The worst excesses of our love for the doomed transcribed from countless 9/11 movies and the likes of Lone Survivor into the post-apocalyptic future.

It’s a remarkable and brave note to finish the episode on. Whether it celebrates the courage and decency that will save the four communities or fetishizes its brutal mutilation is a much more complicated question. Regardless, the show changes forever, this week and while it doesn’t celebrate the horror its new age springs from, it doesn’t look away either. You may have to. I almost did. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart