How did Daryl Dixon end up in France on The Walking Dead?

When “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon” first came out on AMC, my mom watched it before I did. At the time, I asked her how the crossbow-wielding fan favorite managed to get from the American East Coast to France while living in a zombie-infested apocalyptic wasteland. “Some bad guys got him,” she replied simply. On paper, it's a laughable explanation for the sudden, drastic change of scenery over a decade for a franchise that has generally only moved its characters around in sensible ways. However, after I caught up with the show, it became clear that she was right: Daryl's big move involves the introduction of new villains whose misdeeds happen to be in an area adjacent to one of the prettiest cities. in the world.

Behind the scenes, Reed and all of the returning cast and crew from the flagship series also moved to France to shoot — no doubt a significant change after 12 years spent mostly in Atlanta, Georgia. The “bad guys” explanation is actually deceptively simple, as the show spends much of its first season dancing around how Daryl ended up overseas before revealing the backstory (and strange motivations) of his captors in episode 5. from Carol,” as the second season is subtitled, also reintroduces Carol Pelletier (Melissa McBride), Daryl's longtime partner in survival. from “The Walking Dead”. By the end of Season 2, the couple has reunited, but they have also left France. It's another long story from a show that likes to tell long stories.

“The Walking Dead” started dropping hints about what Daryl's spinoff series might include well before it ended. In a season 10 flashback, Daryl retreats to nature, where he's most comfortable, to try to figure out what happened to Rick (Andrew Lincoln) when he supposedly died. There he met a woman named Leah (Lynn Collins) and her dog, er, Dog, both of whom took a liking to him. Of course, this being the darkest show in the world, Leah later revealed some dangerous tendencies and sketched a trust, and Daryl ended up having to kill her.

The last two seasons of “The Walking Dead” tell us everything we need to know about the “Daryl Dixon” series without introducing its plot or characters. In the later Walking Dead era, Daryl is a loner, but he's also capable of showing love and remains close to Carol. He's also a hero through and through, even if it almost kills him. All of this sets the stage for his final exit from the main series, when Daryl learns that Rick is still alive in the show's finale. At the end of season 11, he decides to set off again to find his old friend.

Of course, Daryl doesn't appear in the Rick-centric series “The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live,” because by the time Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Rick meet again on screen in the show, we've already seen Daryl become. diverted to a completely different continent in its spin-off. Fans are shown that Daryl died on a small boat at the beginning of “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon,” but the full backstory of that moment isn't explained until episode 5.

While searching for Rick, Daryl runs out of gas in Maine and decides to help some people capture walkers in exchange for gas to get them home. The man who works at the gas station, Juno (John Ales), is a real piece of work, and after he kills a boy named TJ (Martin Martinez) in cold blood, Daryl confronts him. The group, later called the Living Force (or Pouvoir Du Vivant), captures both Daryl and Juno after their fight and takes them aboard the ship their Paris team is working on. On board, Daryl discovers that Marion Genet (Anne Charrier), the leader of Pouvoir Du Vivant, is conducting convoluted experiments on various variants of the walkers to better understand the mechanisms of the virus.

Later, the whole thing becomes a bit Victor Hugo (and also a bit “Mad Max” for various reasons), as Genet's own flashback reveals that she was a mistreated museum worker who went on strike before the virus spread and uses the Pouvoir organization to claim the power that the upper classes amassed at the start of the apocalypse. However, the group is violent and sometimes cruel, and when Daryl and Juno try to escape the ship, it is torn to pieces by a walker being held for experiments. Ever the reluctant leader, Daryl led a shipboard mutiny and played dead on a small escape ship after a run-in with Genet. For some reason, Pouvoir's crew conduct their experiments aboard a ship in international waters, so they got Daryl most of the way to France before he disembarked from the big boat and made the final leg of the journey himself.

Although McBride was initially announced as a co-creator of the spinoff, but had to back out from Season 1 due to scheduling issues. Her voice is first heard in season one when she and Daryl have a brief conversation over a spotty radio connection. For the first time on the show, she hits a man riding Daryl's motorcycle in Maine, playing innocent, before she hits him with a wrench and traps him in the trunk of her car. The show's first season ends on a bad note with Carol riding off Daryl's bike, hot on his trail.

However, she is in Maine, and it is not easy to get to France years after the end of the world. Carol gets information about Daryl's location from the guys at the gas station, but her mode of transportation turns out to be a small plane piloted by a man, Ash Patel (Manish Dayal). Carol meets Ash at his home, and although the two meet, he doesn't want to leave the place he's clearly turned into a shrine to his dead son. Carol has always been willing to do whatever it takes to get what she wants, and she does so here when she lies and tells Ash that her daughter Sophie (who must have turned into a zombie and was the victim of a classic Rick Grimes headshot “The Walking Dead” season 2) is alive in France.

The plan works and Ash flies Carol to Greenland. From there, she travels to France, where she eventually reunites with Daryl, despite the glaring lack of Google Maps available in this post-apocalyptic hellscape. However, the couple ends Season 2 with a plan to go to England Variety has reported that the third season of the show is being filmed in Spain.

“The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon” is currently streaming on AMC+.