Time for war. And casualties.

The smart thing about this episode is it’s based on a deeply clever, three level plan that falls apart pretty much straight away for the same reason every time: humans.

First off, there’s Jadis who is surely being set up as a major antagonist for future shows here. Pollyanna McIntosh has a remarkable physical presence but here she’s allowed to play smart and it works so well. The moment Huck turns is a perfect example of this; McIntosh showing us surprise, the abject lack of surprise, amusement and sadness all at the same time. But the real meat of the episode here is in the choices Jadis makes and the speech she gets to give to Felix. Jadis is a zealot, CRM to the core and fanatically loyal to them above everyone else. Her explanation for the entire series’ plot is also her justification; the CRM’s research showed the other colonies were becoming too reliant and eventually would drag them down. The CRM culled them to prevent this. That by itself is chilling but add in McIntosh’s delivery on the reassurance that the ‘assets’ were saved beforehand and you have a monster unlike anything else this universe has ever seen. The main show is still in the shadow of a man with a barbed wire baseball bat. Jadis is the mouthpiece for institutionalized genocide. And worse she’s ahead of the characters too, moving the gas off base and leading to a sweaty-palmed fight between Felix and Hope and the released test subjects. A fight that breaks Hope’s vestigial faith in the CRM when she’s forced to kill the newly reanimated Lyla. Jadis isn’t a threat because she’s dangerous, Jadis is a threat because she’s basically won and a lot of the episode is about finding out just how true that is.

Then there’s Silas and poor, poor Webb from the reclamation facility. Jesse Gallegos only gets one major scene as Silas’ former workmate but it’s a vital one for the show. Webb is a teenager, a 20-something at most and he faces Silas down when Silas has his human moment, derailing the plan to go and get meds for the badly wounded Dennis. There’s a moment where Silas begs his not quite friend to let them go and you can see Webb, in his ill-fitting uniform consider it. He doesn’t, he can’t, the CRM conditioning is too strong and it ultimately kills him. There’s none of the theoretical level strategy of Jadis’s CRM here. Just a terrified boy in a uniform he should never be in, dying.

Silas and Elton provide the much-needed light relief this episode too. Not to mention a small but perfectly formed rebuttal to Jadis’ criticism of the globe statue last week. Art literally saves their lives this week and while some people will find the sight of them running the globe like a zorb of death through walkers silly, I don’t care. It’s thematically on point, it’s cool and it gets the boys one step closer to opening that used book and record store somewhere nice after the show I hope they get to open.

And finally, there’s Percy, and his death and why it’s the most human moment of all. In a universe best known for operatic levels of character death (see aforementioned baseball bat enthusiast, Dwight’s murders with Daryl’s crossbow and so on) this just happens. I don’t think it’s even on screen, he’s just caught in the crossfire. It could play as short change for the character but it honestly didn’t to me. This is a war, Percy’s unlucky and his death echoes up and down the rest of the episode. Until the ending, where Huck, apparently grieving a possibly dead Dennis, finds the one thing they need: the nerve gas. Because Jadis is too arrogant to be able to resist hiding it somewhere the others know about and in doing so, she has a human moment too. One that might cost her everything.

Verdict: This is a busy, complex episode that for some folks is going to feel small scale. For me, it feels intimate and focused. One to go. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart