This post contains spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead Season 3, Episode 4, “100.”

Fear the Walking Dead will always face one curse: constant comparison to its predecessor, The Walking Dead. In many ways, the two are very different shows. Most obviously, they take place on opposite coasts; Fear races too quickly, whereas the original tends to crawl; and The Walking Dead has done a far better job developing most of its characters than Fear has, with few exceptions. The prequel series tends to kill its characters off just as they’re becoming interesting—as it did Chris and, more recently, Travis in this season’s two-part premiere.

But on Sunday night, Fear ripped a page out of its predecessor’s book, dedicating a full capsule episode to Daniel Salazar—who, as viewers found out last week, apparently survived the fire at Celia’s compound that seemed to kill him off last season. The real surprise? This episode was a genuinely refreshing change of pace—and, unlike most of The Walking Dead’s stand-alone romps, was never boring.

Since Season 1, Daniel Salazar—expertly played by Rubén Blades—has been one of the most fascinating characters of the series. As viewers were thoroughly reminded on Sunday night, Daniel’s appeal has never been that he’s a hero; in fact, it's just the opposite. Daniel was once a member of the death squad la Sombra Negra. He murdered almost 100 men during the civil war in El Salvador while working for the government. His capsule episode gave viewers both a good reminder of why Daniel was being haunted by ghosts when we last saw him, and a refreshing change of pace: it was executed almost entirely in Spanish, with English subtitles.

As Blades told The Hollywood Reporter, “I don’t know if it’s ever happened before, and in my experience, I don’t remember it: to have a U.S. television outlet transmit in prime time an episode all in Spanish, with subtitles, that really got my attention. I don’t really recall that ever happening. I thought it was very bold of them and very courageous of them and also very timely.” (The Salazars have often communicated in Spanish throughout the series, but this was the first time an entire episode had included only Spanish dialogue.)

The episode also at times delves into magical realism, an unfamiliar mode for the usually grim, less-than-whimsical Walking Dead franchise. It hardly seems like an accidental move, however; much of Latin American literature is heavily steeped in magical realism. (Consider writers including Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, and Isabel Allende.) Daniel’s survival—he somehow escaped a fire that left everyone else charred—sounds almost mythical as he describes it to the priest-like figure, Efrain, who saves him. Another mystical element? Efrain takes the dehydrated Daniel to a fountain located in the middle of a dry wasteland that spurts water every Tuesday at 5 P.M. like clockwork. “A little miracle,” Efrain calls it. And then there’s the almost biblical scene in which Daniel kneels before a walker, overwhelmed and ready to accept his fate—just before lightning strikes the walker in the head, knocking Daniel back next to a canal as water rises to carry him away.

When he comes to, Daniel finds himself inside the center where Dante—an old business associate of Strand’s who took him captive last week—has been hoarding all the water. It turns out that fountain was no miracle; Efrain had an associate on the inside who was routing the water there. Before long, Dante finds Daniel and recognizes his name, fingering him as a member of la Sombra Negra and asking him to be one of his henchmen.