The Walking Dead has, for a long time, run the risk of rehashing the same story over and over. From season to season, spin-off to spin-off, the franchise has been about some group finding some new community, facing some new enemy, conquering that enemy, and moving on. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon has been one of the most compelling spin-offs, bringing the story not just to a new setting, but to an entirely different country as well. In season three, the journey shifts to yet another country, exploring how the apocalyptic event has resulted in different, yet also very similar, situations all over the world.
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2 Recap
In the second season, called The Book of Carol, Daryl (Norman Reedus) is acclimating to life in The Nest while trying to help the group fend off threats. At the same time, Carol (Melissa McBride) is on route to find her friend. Using her savvy skills of manipulation and chameleon-like abilities, she cons a young man with a plane to fly her to France under the guise of looking for her daughter. Of course, Sophia (Madison Lintz) died many, many years ago. But Ash (Manish Dayal) doesn’t know that.
When the two finally reunite, Daryl sadly says goodbye to Isabelle (Clémence Poésy), for whom he was just starting to lean into his romantic feelings. She has been fatally injured. But before she perishes, she begs Daryl to ensure the safety of her nephew Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi). He follows through, finding Laurent, killing Losang (Joel de la Fuente), and ensuring Laurent gets on the plane back to The Commonwealth with Ash. Carol is supposed to go with them (the plane can only fit three people) but she decides to stay back. She’ll make her way home with Daryl.
As they meet new friends to help them navigate through The Channel Tunnel, a 50 km railway tunnel that links France to the U.K., they all start to hallucinate due to excessive amount of bat feces baking in the tunnel for years. (“I guess that’s why they call it batshit crazy,” Carol jokes in season three recalling the harrowing journey).
Of course they make it out alive, but just barely, thanks to gas masks and a healthy dose of the same luck that has been following them since the beginning of their apocalyptic journey. They continue towards England with the hope that somehow, some way, they’ll eventually reach America.
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Review
In the first episode of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season three, Daryl and Carol arrive in England where they realize the devastation there is worse than anything they’ve ever seen. They eventually manage to get on a boat (how and why is a highlight of the season), with bold plans to sail all the way to America. But as we know from the trailer, they don’t get far and end up wrecked on the beach in Spain.
Carol and Daryl are no strangers to challenging situations, and there’s an altruistic pull they often feel when they encounter helpless people, or at least people who are being taken advantage of. It’s as though the words of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) continue to ring in their heads, Isabelle’s words in Daryl’s. Without humanity, what’s it all for, after all? And without hope, there’s no point for humanity.
The season is rich with culture, heritage, and stunning scenery, making good use of beautiful shooting locations in Spain. There are the ruins of the town of Belchite, for example, which became as such following the Spanish Civil War. The settings also mean a lot of subtitles, though anyone who watched the first two seasons has become accustomed to that. As luck would have it for Daryl and Carol, neither of whom speak Spanish, many (though not all) of the people they meet can speak English as well. For us viewers, sorry but no multitasking while you watch, unless you speak Spanish.
You’ll find yourself feeling a sense of déjà vu with this season. Not in comparison to the first two seasons but rather the original series. There’s a Negan-like (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) tyrant character and a community leader who comes across like a less cowardly version of Gregory (Xander Berkeley) from Hilltop. The arrangements between communities aren’t as overtly brazen and violent, but it’s pretty much the same: you do for me what I ask, and we will protect you. It’s right out of any mafia playbook, so it’s no surprise that in this world-building, the same dynamics have formed in virtually every country around the world. Still, from a show narrative standpoint, it feels repetitive, like we’re watching the same story, just with different faces and a new setting.
Daryl and Carol are the common threads, of course, and as always, you’re led to suspend belief and view them as invincible ninjas. Sometimes, they’re knocked down but they are never out. They’re like caped heroes, swooping in to save the day as they have time and time again with other communities like Alexandria, Hilltop, and The Commonwealth. It gives them purpose but what we realize more this season than ever is that is also distracts them from the stark realities of their own trauma.
If season two provided a vehicle for Carol to finally come to terms with her daughter Sophia’s death and find some semblance of closure, season three allows Daryl to fall deeper into himself and his past than he ever has. At least since that time he opened up to Beth (Emily Kinney) about his childhood in the barn. It’s easy to forget that life was awful for Daryl before the apocalypse, and he still carries a lot of that family trauma with him. Season three is a stark reminder of that, both for viewers and for Daryl himself.
Like with the previous two seasons, it’s not all about these two. As the season progresses, new characters become a major part of the fold, others come and go quickly with little development, some even abandoned before we can truly feel like we know them. Each character and group resembles ones we’ve seen before: a version of The Wolves and/or The Whisperers, the ladies of Oceanside, The Scavengers – they’re all back with a Spanish twist, and some unique types you haven’t yet seen. The actors are all great in their roles. But there’s no one you really, truly feel connected to enough to want to see them succeed, nor even feel like you’d be particularly devastated if they became walker dinner.
There’s also a romantic element to the story this season. We saw a bit of that in season two with Daryl sharing his first-ever on-screen kiss (as in ever in the franchise, including in the original series!) This once again replicates stories we saw before in The Walking Dead, like with Glenn (Steven Yuen) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Greene) and Abraham (Michael Cudlitz). But it’s a refreshing break from the danger and action that fills the rest of the time.
Speaking of the action scenes, you’ll be pleased with the use of walkers, weapons, and methods of killing you’ve never seen before. I will hand it to the show: in every season and every show, they have managed to find a new way to present, use, and kill walkers, not to mention fashion just about anything into a weapon. Think killing a walker by expelling a fire extinguisher into its mouth and using walkers like marionettes. Kudos to the writers who probably had sleepless nights trying to come up with these clever and engaging concepts that didn’t repeat the same old, same old.
The Story Sets Up What We Hope Will Be an Epic Final Season
As the penultimate season, season three is setting the story up for what fans hope will be an eventual epic reunion. For now, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, like the other remaining sequel The Walking Dead: Dead City, is at a point where it’s lather, rinse, repeat. It’s recycling narratives from the original, whether intentionally or not, with a new setting, characters, and language. There are shifts and twists to differentiate it, however, just enough to make it interesting.
In a way, that’s OK. If the world was overtaken with walking undead seeking out human flesh, chances are people in every country would be doing similar things. We, as humans, have a natural instinct to survive, a fight or flight response. For some, that means survival of the fittest. For others, it’s about banding together and building a socialist society. Some believe it’s about terror and intimidation: the only way to survive is to take what you want. Thus, it makes sense that the situations Daryl encounters in France and Spain remind him a lot of what he has already been through in America. And in fact, they are a lot like what he has already experienced.
If you view the third season as a set-up for the final confirmed fourth season, you’ll enjoy the interesting pitstop the dynamic duo makes on their way home, because that’s really all that it is. It shifts from exciting to subdued, providing moments of calm and edge-of-your-seat tension. But you’ll find yourself yearning for the end. This isn’t their battle, and they really should leave. Daryl needs to get home. He needs to know Rick is still alive and us as fans need that deeply emotional reunion, which has been years in the making. It would be a travesty if we didn’t get it. That’s what we want. This season is merely a mildly entertaining interlude until then.
For now, enjoy the journey. At times, it’s like watching The Walking Dead with new faces, a new language, and the same story. Believing it will all come together in the end makes it worth going along for the ride, however, right to the bitter end. Hasta la próxima.