The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon premieres September 10 on AMC and AMC+. This is a non-spoiler review for all six episodes of season 1. The series has already been renewed for a second season.
The newest Walking Dead spinoff is a minor triumph. Admittedly, that's grading on a bit of a curve, considering the original series' languid and wasteful final few seasons. But The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon feels markedly different from the rest of the franchise, to its extreme benefit, and gives the franchise's most terse and unwashed hero his most emotionally gripping story in over a decade. It's a winning hero's journey featuring a weathered character in desperate need of illumination and purpose.
In fact, go ahead and watch this series even if you're a lapsed Walking Dead-ite and skipped the past couple years. All you need to know is that when The Walking Dead closed up shop, most everyone (who survived, which is still most everyone) lived in a place called the Commonwealth and Daryl left to go exploring. Daryl Dixon relies on you a) liking Daryl, and b) knowing he's close to Carol. That's kind of it.
Norman Reedus revels in this new material, co-starring with Clémence Poésy (Harry Potter's Fleur Delacour) as a "warrior nun" (with a shifty past). (The series was conceived as a Daryl-and-Carol spin-off, before Melissa McBride backed out.) After leaving the Commonwealth, Daryl's search for other friendly communities in the United States ends up going wildly sideways – so much so he involuntarily becomes an expat. Filmed in France, the series has an aesthetic leg up on most other Walking Dead series. (I don't know about you but when a zompocalypse hits I want to be somewhere with ancient, fortified castles.) Establishing shots of CGI dystopia aside, the French landscape really does lend a lot to the look here. So does seeing this ravaged European terrain through the eyes of "backwoods chic" Daryl, who probably wouldn't have made it out of Georgia if it weren't for society's collapse. It makes for an intriguing fish-out-of-water story.
There's a running theme in Daryl Dixon of broken characters who've been "fixed" by a broken world – and Daryl winding up in France is part of that mix. Often in zombie movies, broken people thrive in a world gone mad, but the emphasis here is that civilization falling changes some of these traumatized folks for the better and allows them to grow in ways they couldn't previously.
Daryl seeing Paris, even as it exists 12 years into the zombie takeover (there's a very specific marker in the series letting us know this), is just… nice. And as brusque and untrusting as he can be, Daryl makes for an excellent centerpiece for this particular offshoot. Way better than when The Walking Dead tried to shift leading man responsibilities over to Reedus when Andrew Lincoln left. This show, from former ER showrunner David Zabel, has figured out how to use Daryl better than the mothership ever did. Sure, its bread and butter is still violence and conflict and zombies and yada yada, but there's a recurring joy here that really hasn't been expressed much before.
After being shipwrecked, and drifting to the shores of Southern France, our reluctant hero finds himself torn between two families, forming new connections that begin to rival his close attachments back in the Commonwealth. For a while he's insistent upon finding a way home, and brokers a season-stretching deal to do so, but ultimately the series is about someone with strong loyalties finding out… they might belong somewhere else. Is Daryl about to learn the lessons from the last two Toy Story movies? It seems so!
It's a touching, winning adventure for the guy who's arguably the saga's most popular character. And it allows Reedus to play with, and expand upon, Daryl in ways he hasn't done for a while. Or even… ever? Look, Daryl has, for many fans, been the "coolest" character on The Walking Dead. He's a gruff, handsome, leather-vested biker who kills with a crossbow. Ultra cool. Charisma-wise, though? Eh. Let's just say it's rare for a character to become so well-liked (remember the "If Daryl dies, we riot!" movement?) while providing so little.
This isn't Reedus' fault. This is just how Daryl was treated over 11 seasons: Daryl didn't massively arc like his BFF Carol did. He was basically the guy who wound up being best suited for a world gone to shit because he was already an isolated badass. He's been angry, he's been tender, but it's usually been portrayed within the same minuscule spectrum. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon allows him to break free from that like never before. Without betraying what makes Daryl Daryl, the series opens up his world, his world view, and his emotional capabilities.
Also, and this is just an interesting reward for those who've watched Walking Dead this long: Daryl is a champion. Like, he's a superior fighter here and people gravitate toward him like a foretold hero of mythic stature. It's just a fun payoff to all the wrenching adventures he's endured through the years and all the fighting he's had to do. You would hope he's the best of the best.
Paired with Dead City, Daryl Dixon shows that The Walking Dead could have been way more creatively rewarding had it broken away from its blueprint years ago. Dead City even went so far as to undo the emotional work of its protagonists from the final season just so it could do it all over again (and do it better). Daryl Dixon isn't a full culture shock, since a zombie-obliterated France will have more in common with anywhere else in the world that's been overrun with the undead, but it's still charming enough to slowly chisel away at Daryl's stubborn emotional armor.
There are a few drawbacks to Daryl Dixon, however. Firstly, it's still a Walking Dead show. It comes to us already feeling like well-worn territory, and with a lead character we've been following for 13 years. There is no actual new ground being broken here from a TV standpoint: It's just a "good" showing.
Secondly: It's an apocalypse dad show, and one that's premiering in the shadow of The Last of Us, to boot. This setup was already a cliché before The Last of Us, but then that show went and did it better than anyone else. And now Daryl, with his grumpy standoffishness, must escort a "special" child across the French countryside to Paris. It's not the exact same story, per se, but it's going to be similar enough to draw negative comparisons.
The boy in need of safe passage is Laurent, played by Louis Puech Scigliuzzi. Laurent is an extremely learned kid, raised by a convent – and by a larger union/resistance movement of converged faiths from all over – who see him as a type of messiah. Daryl Dixon avoids some of the pitfalls of the dystopian escort mission by having it not just be Daryl and Laurent making the long trip, though it also stumbles sometimes since having a TV kid means that kid will have to get super mad sometimes, for the sake of plot, and run off. Or do something dumb. It's a give and take. Laurent is an interesting enough addition, though, to Daryl's life – a huge, empathetic and inquisitive presence.
More captivating though is Poésy's Isabelle, who slowly lights up Daryl's heart as a possible love interest. It's a relationship that feels earned and genuine, unlike a lot of his time with Leah back home (though most of that was antagonistic). And it has to be, right? We can't just spend all our time wanting Daryl to get back to America. The bonds he forms here have to be meaningful enough so that we want him to stay. Or, at least, are also torn about the entire situation ourselves.
The franchise continues to struggle to make its obligatory walker attacks interesting; fortunately, Daryl Dixon holds these in reserve, allowing the human story, including the human obstacles and villains, to take center stage. Given that there must be zombies on the show, however, Zabel and the writing staff do their best to liven things up on the undead front, whether its Daryl himself wielding his favorite new weapon – a mace and chain (castle armories, amirite?) – or giving us walkers who can burn you with their skin.
You may also chuckle a bit, no matter how many scenes involve people conversing in French, at Daryl encountering so many people who speak English. Granted, this isn't out of the ordinary for people in Europe, but with so few people in the Walking Dead world, and that world now being over a decade into the shit, it's silly for, say, a group of teens to know English. It's a minor quibble, though, since the series actually does a fairly good job at providing language barriers when needed.
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon will make you wish the franchise did better, more interesting things with Daryl long ago and it succeeds at the unthinkable: transporting Daryl to a new place where we enjoy him more and he enjoys himself more. There's a lot you've seen before, because it's a zombie story in 2023 (and it's Walking Dead, more specifically), but the change of scenery, the exploration of the outbreak in Europe, and Daryl developing genuine attachments with a different cast provides a strong reason to check back in with this character. The series even makes France itself a meaningful part of Daryl's backstory and motivation so that as random as it might feel to plunk him down in a such a romanticized place, there is a full circle message that resonates.
