The Walking Dead may be heading towards its final run, but season 10’s latest offering proves the show’s infamous ability to unsettle hasn’t faded yet. In the wake of The Walking Dead season 11 being delayed due to COVID-19, AMC chose to extend season 10 with a series of anthology episodes focusing on different characters. After Maggie’s return and Daryl’s flashback, “One More” turns its attention towards Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) and Aaron (Ross Marquand), as they desperately hunt for any canned beans that haven’t been scavenged. The priest and his companion strike the jackpot when chancing upon a boar, a bottle of booze and a pack of cards, but when something seems too good to be true in The Walking Dead, it usually is.

As Gabriel wakes up a little worse for wear, he finds that last night’s pork and whiskey belonged to Robert Patrick’s Mays. As if getting on the wrong side of Terminator 2‘s T-1000 wasn’t enough, Mays is packing a loaded automatic rifle and has already taken Aaron hostage. The scarred stranger reveals that he once traveled with his brother, but was betrayed when food began to run scarce. Now, Mays wants to prove that the apocalypse has corrupted everyone, so forces his captives to play a deadly game of Russian Roulette, where each shot can be aimed at either their opponent or themselves. By refusing to turn on each other, the duo convince Mays that virtue isn’t completely dead… and then Gabriel kills him.

But the real twist of “One More” comes when Gabriel and Aaron explore deeper into Mays’ hideout and find his brother (it’s Robert Patrick again!) chained up next to two skeletons – the prisoner’s wife and daughter. Each skull has a bullet wound, and the brother mumbles “he made me play…” Clearly, Mays forced his brother to either play the Russian Roulette game with his wife and child, or watch while the other two participated. Given the positions of the bullet holes (the adult’s in the center, the child’s to the side), the wife was probably killed by her “opponent” in the game, whereas the child was a victim of bad luck. Mays’ brother could have shot his wife, but couldn’t do the same when sat opposite his daughter, surviving through chance alone.

Even by The Walking Dead‘s standards, this is a rather disturbing turn of events, but one that plays on audience assumptions about Robert Patrick’s character. At first, viewers are encouraged to dislike Mays – he takes Aaron hostage and risks killing the two protagonists, after all. But when the facade finally cracks and Mays gives his name, the audience feel angry toward Gabriel, who caved the man’s head in despite the situation being defused. Aaron is salty with his friend too, but when the hidden area and its literal skeletons are revealed, Mays’ true nature comes to the fore. One way or another, Mays killed his niece and sister-in-law, causing a child’s death merely to prove his point. Suddenly, Gabriel’s actions don’t seem quite so bad. It’s an emotional roller coaster that matches the episode’s overarching discussion – is there still good left in the world? Aaron proves there is, but after Gabriel takes a life needlessly and Mays’ past becomes clear itself, the priest’s words from earlier echo in the mind. Evil is the rule; good is the exception.

The Walking Dead season 10’s Mays storyline certainly ranks highly among the zombie apocalypse’s all-time darkest moments. Negan’s introduction was ruthlessly violent, Carol’s “look at the flowers” scene was an emotional gut-punch, and Rick biting an attacker was grim but necessary. But in each of those cases, the lines of “good” and “evil” were drawn quite clearly. In “One More,” Mays’ evil isn’t properly shown until the very final moments. For once, viewers must judge a stranger purely on what they’ve seen, meaning some will agree with Gabriel’s swift, decisive action, and others will side with Aaron’s mercy. By drawing the viewer into the discussion, The Walking Dead creates one of its most morally gruesome moments yet.