Percy and Elton make some new ‘friends’. Hope finds out what makes the kids at the compound unique.

Spoilers

Here we go. From the opening, mildly surreal burial of the ‘Vessels’ to the cliffhanger ending there’s something new and interesting happening basically every scene here. We get no Silas, which is a shame, but we do get a lot of Huck and Dennis and it’s all interesting stuff. It’s now clear Dennis did something awful, which he paid for by his time on the clean up crews and Huck paid for by two years in deep cover. Their relationship is really nicely played, and Mahendru and Maximilian Osinski as the pair are great. Mahendru is blossoming as the context for Huck’s actions becomes clear (her mother’s chair being empty at her reinstatement hearing, and it really bothering her, is really well played). Osinski for his part has this wounded Captain America energy which is really compelling to watch. Dennis feels like a hero, stuck in the least heroic place possible. I suspect he won’t stay there.

Hope too has a good episode as she meets the brain trust genius children the CRM are using to power their initiatives, possibly helps her dad crack his work with some epic science nerdery (homebrew to the rescue!) and have an absolute PTSD attack. This is another one of the recurrent beats the show is setting up that I really like: Hope is at the edge of her tolerance and she’s not weak or ever played or written as such. She’s just done. Frequently. It’s sensitively written and played and leads to the reunion that begins at the end of the episode and will undoubtedly go badly. It also sets up Huck with a rival, Corporal Pierce (Gissette Valentin), who took her duties while she was away and is none too happy to see her back. She’s a tangible threat, and also clearly likes Huck a lot, and that instant tension makes the mildly cheesy beat where Huck smuggles Hope out in the back of Dennis’ truck work really well.

But what really soars this week is the Elton and Percy plot. Nicholas Cantu and Ted Sutherland have fantastic double act chemistry and their attempted turnip theft here is legitimately hilarious. Not only Elton’s deeply awful grifting and Percy’s cheerful hurt at being accused of theft as he is stealing something but in how it plays out. Elton’s deeply hurt ‘They’re just turnips!’ as Dev’s axe hits a tree rather too close to his head made me laugh out loud as did the justification for and theft of his industrial corduroy suit.

Better still, this plot neatly segues into Iris and Felix’s, with the reveal that Dev and Asha are the children of the Perimeter’s leader. The reunion, especially between Percy and Iris, is really very sweet but what works even better is the conversation between Elton and Asha. Madelyn Kientz not only has a mean spinning heel kick but plays Asha with a grounded, two-fisted playfulness that’s a welcome change from our often pretty dour main characters. Her attitude towards the dead, that they’re ‘Vessels’ not ‘Empties’ is especially fascinating and I’d love to see that belief system explored further. Plus she and Dev, who has staff skills that would make Morgan proud and is played brilliantly by Abubakr Ali, are an instantly fun double act in an episode full of them.

Verdict: This is fun, and smart and kind and nasty and drives every plot this show has further along. It’s a great episode of a show a lot of people seem to be overlooking and it’s honestly their loss because between a strong season 11 of the core show, Fear the Walking Dead’s barnstorming season opener and this? The Walking Dead universe is in excellent form. Or perhaps more fittingly, alive and well. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart