As Michonne settles into her new life, and immediately tries to escape from it, we find out what Rick’s given up.

Michonne, Rick and the episode as a whole have hard work to do this week and two of them fail in the most interesting way.

For Michonne, the job is to attempt to be the one thing she isn’t: a victim. The dystopian societal eugenics of the CRM mean she’s under surveillance from the jump for being nowhere near as passive as she’s supposed to be. It being Michonne, she makes almost no attempt to fit in and Danai Gurira has tremendous fun here cutting loose physically and dramatically. The fist pump moment of Rick’s note saying ‘I left you something’ and Michonne picking up her katana is fantastic, and director Michael Slovis peppers the episode with great shots. Thorne, Michonne and Rick not-quite facing off in the same spot Okafor read Thorne and Rick in is fantastic but the panicked, foggy battle near Cascadia Base beats it. Faced with a situation where she can help, Michonne can’t refuse. Her fundamental decency wakes that up in Rick too and the pair of them running a ‘Delt’-plow shaped bomb into a herd in the foggy Pacific Northwest is one of the show’s first iconic moments and marks it out as visually different to its stablemates.

Gabriel Llaanas and Matthew Negrete’s script is central to this too, and the introduction of Cascadia Base and the Echelon Plan confirms just how big the CRM are thinking. The former is a forward operating base near the West Coast. The latter is the plan Thorne is read in on, and Jadis describes as a ‘500 year plan to rebuild what we lost.’ The CRM is a crusade, and it makes believers out of Jadis, Thorne and very nearly Rick.

Rick’s hard work is to not give up, to literally ‘believe just a little longer’. As we find out from Benjiro, the man who has been making the art Rick has left behind, that’s something he’s struggled with. As we see later, it’s because Jadis has given him a choice: stay and help save the world, or leave and she will know exactly where he’s gone, find him and kill every single person in the settlements we’ve come to know and love. Rick’s response to this is understandable, tow the line, get Michonne out, regroup as he can. What’s revealing is that by the end of the episode, when he attempts to drive Michonne away, he tells her he belongs here. Andrew Lincoln plays that with customary subtlety and there’s a genuine sense that Rick, a cop all those years ago, really does see the good in what the CRM could do. Or perhaps he’s just tired after all the years of running. It’s a complex, difficult road for him to walk and the fact he fails, that he sacrifices himself or tries to, is telling of both who he is and how well the CRM’s systems work. After all, back in the first episode Okafor told him A’s die for their causes…

It’s also a smart way of justifying the dramatic tension. This isn’t Rick being very, very stupid as he had a tendency to be in the early seasons. This is Rick in an impossible situation, doing what he can and failing in the most interesting of ways. All of which leads to the show’s best ending in years as Michonne hurls the pair of them out of a helicopter mid-flight.

The episode succeeds in just as interesting a fashion and gives Lesley-Ann Brandt’s Thorne some serious dramatic work to do. Brandt has always been great but she’s blossoming here and Thorne as Rick’s rival/not-quite love interest/ally is the show’s most interesting dynamic outside the main two characters. The return of Pollyanna McIntosh as Jadis is also excellent fun to see and Jadis is given a welcome, softer but no less sharp edge. She really is a believer, and while she’s worked the system at Rick’s expense she still believes in it. A zealot is always dangerous and she’s a tangible threat as the episode closes.

Elsewhere in the cast, Terry O’Quinn impresses as ever in another cameo as Major General Beale but Julian Cihi and Tessa Hope Slovis stand out the most. The former is a kind, gentle artist who opens up to Michonne and helps her in the way no one else does. The latter is Cleo, a fellow consignee who sees what Michonne is capable of and may be capable of similar. Both feel like fully formed characters brushing against this story from their own and both help give this corner of the Walking Dead universe a welcome sense of depth and variety.

Verdict: With freefall and emotional processing on deck next episode this season really is hitting its stride. Impressive, once again. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart