It's the tightening of the noose - quiet, careful, and heavy with consequence. 8.5/10
Ep 9 may not explode, but it smoulders with dread. This is where narrative threads start pulling taut. The script is spare but purposeful and layered, never wasting a word. It lets grief, memory, and looming choices hang in the air, and gives its actors space to do the heavy lifting.
Performances continue to anchor the episode. Tom Sturridge remains a pillar of stillness: his Morpheus barely speaks above a murmur, but you feel the emotional quake building.
Around him, other players step forward. Boyd Holbrook's Corinthian continues to be revealing layers that hint at something deeper than just darkness. Jenna Coleman's Johanna Constantine makes her return with a bite - acid-tongued and magnetic. But Ann Skelly's Nuala emerges as a more emotionally centred figure in this episode, portraying restraint and heartbreak with a touch of quiet defiance.
Direction by Jamie Childs continues to favour restraint, with moody palettes and lingering stillness doing much of the storytelling. It's less plot, more pressure... a bridge between sorrow and what's to come.
If Volume 2 has a turning point, this might be it... quietly transformative and tense in all the right ways.
