At New York Comic Con 2023, AMC premiered the Season Finale of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon in an early screening of the finale prior to its debut this Sunday, October 15. For those who don’t know, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon has been a critical success on AMC and is easily the most successful show ever on the young AMC+ streaming platform.
In The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, Daryl washes ashore in France and struggles to piece together how he got there, though is on a mysterious mission of his own. The series tracks his journey across a broken but resilient France as he hopes to find a ship back, though along the way, he starts to acknowledge that perhaps home isn’t back with the people left behind but rather the ones that we find who need us along the way.
Due to spoiler embargos, we can’t get into much regarding the finale itself but will stress it satisfied our tastes in just about every single way: with continuously great cinematography, refined choreographed action sequences, and actual story broke work with intention, all revealed in great detail during the panel.
The big revelations included Greg Nicotero revealing that he’s directing the season 2 Book of Carol premiere plus a lot of surprising details regarding Norman Reedus’ work done on the show thus far as an executive producer. This included his involvement as EP as the big reason (along with Melissa McBride) that the series chose to shoot in France as compared to working back in Atlanta or on a sound stage, as both he and McBride sought challenges to this over a decade old character, thus creating this iconic new formula in style that accentuated the series different tone.
What’s nifty and what makes this show great thus far? Is that it’s become less of a grind in the nature of the original series’ lengthy episode runs and captures the spirit of actual old-school single-camera movie filmmaking for a 6-episode series. This means no boring green screens. Just filmmaking shot in locations, catacombs, and actual French historical landmarks that make everything about this series feel real. Add in great acting performances and stellar directions and by all means, the show does feel like something refreshingly different.
Atop of this, the season finale of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon hosted a startling revelation at the end of that panel that Melissa McBride returning to the franchise. This came as a shock, as the actress originally slated to co-star in this Daryl spinoff, dropped out of the project last year citing an inability to relocate to Europe for the reason.
This apparently has been remedied, as the actress will be returning to the series in what I can only describe as the most redundant and silliest of names for absolutely anything, that very much is banking off the show’s two most popular characters, entitled:
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol.
“I’ve known there was much more to be told of Carol’s story as I felt her so unsettled when we last saw her, as she watched her best friend, Daryl, ride away. Apart or (hopefully!) together, their stories run deep, and I’m so excited to continue Carol’s journey here,” said actress Melissa McBride regarding her return to the character. “This team of storytellers have done amazing work to land these two established characters in an entirely new world to them, and I’m loving the discoveries!”
This series will thankfully continue to be shot in France and set in evermore gorgeous backdrops, as production will resume in October 20th as confirmed with showrunner David Zabel. The season 2 sequel will premiere sometime on AMC in 2024. That is, of course, after AMC’s other highly anticipated Walking Dead spinoff The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, which will finally see what happened to series original star Rick Grimes along with another beloved favorite, Michonne.
