Rick and Michonne break into the CRM. They both get the Echelon Briefing. It goes exactly as well as you might think.

Showrunner Scott M. Gimple & Channing Powell bring this first (?) season into land with an aplomb and calm that you didn’t dare hope for. The much rumoured ‘Rick gets bitten’ moment does not happen, and the persistent threat of sudden, tragic failure doesn’t rear its partially decayed head. They win. It sucks and it’s very hard but they genuinely win and that’s one of the bravest choices this franchise has made in years.

The other is that Gimple and Powell have crafted an episode with a small scale and a massive reach. Much of Michonne’s plot is her, in full CRM gear, sneaking into the base to find Jadis’ notes on them and then getting into the Echelon Briefing. This requires Danai Gurira to act with essentially her eyes and nothing more and it’s absolutely electric. The slow, polite reveal in the briefing that the CRM have chosen the 10% of children they’ll save when they kill Portland is made by her wide, furious, terrified stare. Gurira mentioned in a recent interview that the choice to end the photos of ‘candidates’ with an actor who looks like her son, RJ, was hers and it pays off massively. What they’re planning is horrifying, and Michael E. Strazemis’ direction gives Gurira the space to react and us to feel the scale of what’s being discussed.

Meanwhile the other half of the episode is essentially Andrew Lincoln in two two-hander scenes with two other amazing actors. Lesley Ann-Brandt’s Thorne comes to the same conclusion Rick and Michonne do but, unlike them, she stays on message. Her scenes with Lincoln crackle with tenson and again, the silent acting when she realises she’s been betrayed is incredible. Likewise her final duel with Michonne, the embodiments of fatalism and optimism duking it out in the ruins of the CRM.

Lincoln’s other scenes this week are with Terry O’Quinn and having two of the best genre TV actors of the last two decades in the same room does not disappoint. O’Quinn reveals Beale to be the worst kind of monster: a true believer. He’s embraced the apparent end of humanity as a shield to hide his barbarism behind and the way the scene unfolds is chilling. We see him explain that humanity will die inside 14 years unless action is taken, we see him throw Rick’s old ‘we’re the walking dead’ line back at him, and we see him weight the costs of the atrocities he’s planning. He’s not evil because he doesn’t feel that weight. He’s evil because he knows he’s wrong and he’s convinced himself it’s the only way. Lincoln meanwhile, does even more micro acting as we get flashes back to the people he and Michonne have killed, and the people they’ve lost. The moment where he turns his ‘murder eyes’ back on, and Beale realises he’s in big trouble, is punch the air euphoric and utterly terrifying.

All of which leads to the closing fight, where Michonne and Rick take the CRM Frontliners off the map. Literally. The massive bomb they rig is the sort of device Nat would enjoy and his namecheck is a nice touch. As important, though, is the show’s willingness to acknowledge just how terrifying its leads are. At one point Michonne finds Rick pummelling a guard’s head open with his metal hand and doesn’t bat an eye. Michonne’s fight with Brandt is close but never in doubt. They’re doombringers, radicalised by their love for each other. They’re not the walking dead, they’re the walking living and god help anyone who gets in their way because they won’t. Some people will have problems with this but for me, it worked fine. This entire show has been about these two returning to each other and the earth-shaking power they have together. Seeing it flex after four episodes and change of them not being in lockstep is a perfect cap for the show.

So, that happy ending. As the series ends the CRM have been decimated by the revelation of Beale’s choices, the Civil Republic has opened its borders, and Rick and Michonne are reunited with their children. It feels like an evolution of the world and a definite ending for them, and Gurira also hints at that in the interview I mentioned above.

But nothing ever quite stops moving in this world, and Gimple has made it clear he’s working towards a crossover show. Whether Rick and Michonne will be part of it remains to be seen, and God knows if any characters have earned their rest it’s these two. But if they aren’t, and this is the last time we see them?

Verdict: It’s a hard fought, blood-soaked and long overdue happy ending. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart