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In the 14 years of AMC's The Walking Dead universe the 2022 announcement that the much-anticipated spin-off series The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, starring Norman Reedus, would be set and filmed in France ranks as one of the most unexpected twists of the whole franchise.
This feature original appeared in SFX Issue 383. Subscribe to the magazine online here.
From his introduction in the third episode of the flagship series, Daryl Dixon has always represented the personification of the insular, rural American. From his poor, abused upbringing to his indefatigable loyalty for the very few people he trusts, Dixon is the antithesis of worldliness. However, Reedus and his character’s global popularity remains undisputed to this day. So the rough biker with a good heart found himself the ultimate fish out of water, literally washed up on the shore near Marseilles in season one.
Over six episodes, Dixon travelled across the gorgeously destroyed ruins of France trying to figure out exactly what had happened to him. With no memory of that, no friends and no French-speaking skills, Dixon was forced to connect with feisty nun Isabelle Carriere (Clémence Poésy); her nephew – and possible Messiah – Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi); and eventually, Losang, (Joel de la Fuente) the pacifist Union of Hope leader.
The man responsible for this radical arc is showrunner/executive producer David Zabel (ER), a newbie to the Walking Dead universe. He tells SFX that even as a casual fan, Dixon was always a favourite of his. So when he got the job to run the spin-off, he was thrilled to be able to drop Dixon (and Reedus) into a fresh environment that would force the character to confront his past and present without the crutch of his Commonwealth family, including bestie Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride).
“He’s in a place where he doesn’t fully understand the language, or the culture. He’s surrounded most immediately by people of deep faith, yet he does not share that faith,” Zabel says of Dixon’s ongoing predicament in France. “There was something quite lovely to me about that, because he has great affection for Isabelle and Laurent but he doesn’t believe what they believe.
"Yet they’re still very tightly bound to each other. He’s trying to be a different kind of parent for Laurent than Isabelle is as a mother figure. It felt simultaneously of a piece with the original series, but also like an expansion of it."
Friends reunited
By the end of the first season, Dixon made the decision to stay with the pair to better prepare them to withstand their immediate threats, like the overzealous religious believers and antagonists like the Pouvoir des Vivants (Power of the Living), a paramilitary group that is experimenting with Walkers so they become beefed-up versions called “Ampers”.
“[Daryl] has a need to make sure this child will be okay in a world, specifically in a France, that seems to be very dangerous for him,” Zabel says of Dixon’s decision. “He’s trying to navigate that. How to preserve some of what’s beautiful about that child who has been given to him, largely by Isabelle, but also make that child strong enough, tough enough to defend himself in the world.”
However, what Daryl doesn’t know is that his brief radio call across the ocean with Carol in “Deux Amours” compelled his friend to work out a way to make the perilous journey to find him. Carol’s pursuit of leads ended the season, and gave Zabel and his writers a roadmap for season two, with the pair of characters pulling off parallel protagonist duty.
“A phrase that comes up a lot is the ‘cosmic connection’ between the two of them,” Zabel says of the singular connection between Daryl/ Carol. “I always found the relationship between them beautiful. As a fan prior to my experience here, those two were the characters that I always was most intrigued by and interested in individually, and in terms of their relationship with each other. So her desire and need to go search for him and find him to make sure he’s okay, that made sense pretty quickly.”
While McBride had initially signed up to do the spin-off with Reedus, the European relocation kept her out of the first season as a regular. When she was able to join the cast for season two, Zabel says he sat down with the actress to find out what she still wanted to explore with Carol.
“Immediately, we started talking about the trauma that Carol had been through, that she felt she hadn’t totally processed,” he recalls. “She hadn’t had the time and ability to process the things that Carol had endured on The Walking Dead, so that was still an unanswered question for her as a character and as an actor playing that character. That’s what we really endeavoured to dig into for season two – this story of Carol processing and working through this unresolved grief that really begins with the biggest of all, which is her daughter, the loss of Sophia, but continues with a lot of other things that have been subsequent to that.”
He continues, “Searching for Daryl, in a way, is also a way to cure herself; to find her friend and heal herself at the same time. That, to me, made it complicated and cool and also totally justified, because she has to go to desperate and extraordinary measures to try to find him. She’s saving herself and she’s saving him at the same time, and that made it much more exciting to write and much more exciting for the actor to play, because there’s so many levels to it.”
Zabel notes that this spin-off also finally gives these two actors the spotlight. Before, they’d always had to share it with the large ensemble of characters on The Walking Dead. “Here they get to really carry a story, and you get to go into nooks and crannies of their personalities and their experiences in a way that are harder to do in a bigger-cast show,” he says.
Without spoiling big things to come, Zabel indicates that audiences can expect Carol’s best and worst sides to come out during her quest to make it to France. He teases that she’ll meet and make a key alliance with Ash (Manish Dayal), an ingenious survivor who not only shares some similar trauma, but has access to a working plane.
Meanwhile in France, the tentative bond between Dixon and Isabelle will continue to evolve organically. “There are moments of friction, but there are obviously moments of mutual interest, and more than friendship that seems to be developing,” Zabel confirms.
“Norman and I talked about this, that we wanted to draw a mature, adult relationship between a man and a woman and see where it went. Let’s just put these two characters, who are very different in very interesting, intriguing ways, force them together by the story facts, and then see what happens.
“What happened in season one was that you could see a connection forming, for sure,” he continues. “We didn’t manufacture that but we left room for it. A lot of season two is about the development of that and where that relationship goes, and that little surrogate family of Isabelle, Daryl and Laurent.”
Does that mean long-time shippers of Daryl and Carol are in for some heartbreak? Zabel says yes, because he and the actors are of the same mind when it comes to the duo's bond. “I know there are a lot of fans who feel this way, and I respect that,” he says.
“The obvious thing to do, and the easier thing to do would be, ‘Okay, now they’re falling in love and they’re a couple.’ But I always felt like that would be a mistake, because it would feel like you were going into the TV book of tricks. To me, there was never a question that [their connection] was something other than what it is, and what it seems to want to be, and why it works so well.”
Zabel counters that the more interesting story to ponder is what might happen when a journey-changed Carol meets an experience-changed Daryl in France. “On the other side of that was the idea that, when she does get to him, what does she find?” Zabel says. “Will she find somebody who has changed in some ways, and who has found something that she did not expect him to find? That is a great way to advance this relationship. When they finally do get together, eventually, what she finds is not exactly the guy who left her. And she’s not the Carol that he left behind when they said goodbye on the bench.”
The good news is that there won’t be a rush to figure out exactly who those new people are because AMC has already renewed Daryl Dixon for a third season, which is set to begin production in late summer in Spain.
Creatively, Zabel says he’s been really satisfied that so far, they’ve been able to both honour the past while progressing Daryl and Carol. “My focus in navigating these two was don’t get stuck in a rut, but also, don’t let them stop changing and growing. If you can manage between those two, then you’re telling good stories. You’re letting the characters move forward and letting the actors play different and new things.
“You can see it in Norman and Melissa’s performances. They’re bringing an energy to it and a spirit to it that does feel somewhat reinvigorated.”
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2 is airing weekly on Sundays on AMC, and coming to Sky and NOW on October 10. For more, check out our The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2 release schedule, our The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2 review, and our guide to how to watch The Waking Dead in order.
