The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon showrunner has story in mind for Carol

The Walking Dead reached the end of its eleven season run last year, and long before the show ended we knew the character Daryl Dixon (played by Norman Reedus) was going to be getting a spin-off. But when the Daryl spin-off was first announced, it was said to focus on the two-person team of Daryl and his friend Carol (Melissa McBride). That plan changed when it was decided that the show was going to take place in Europe, and McBride didn’t want to relocate for an extended period of time. So we’ve gotten the solo spin-off The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon… but showrunner David Zabel still has story in mind for the Carol character.

Here’s a bit of a SPOILER: in the most recent episode of Daryl Dixon, McBride made a vocal cameo on a staticky radio transmission, and the lines she spoke are meant to be a set-up for the Carol story Zabel wants to tell.

During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Zabel was asked, “We have this scene where Daryl is talking to Carol on the radio. What can you say about bringing Melissa McBride and this character into the picture — although I guess not literally the picture, but into the story?” He answered, “We were always excited with any ways that we could kind of kiss up to the legacy show, to the franchise, and to the history of the characters. And this was obviously a very exciting way, because it was the first time in our show where he had actual real-life literal contact with the world that he was stranded from, and with ostensibly a character who’s as close to him as anybody. So it was an exciting way to send out a life raft, so to speak, and connect him to what everybody knows about his past in the United States.“

The Entertainment Weekly interviewer went on to ask, “Carol breaks up on the radio, but Daryl hears that someone ‘came back.’ How important is that missing nugget of information?” The answer: “Well, it is important to what her ongoing story may be, and it is important in terms of what we were thinking is going on in Carol’s world at that moment. It’s also not what the audience expects or anticipates, if they’re anticipating something. So it will ultimately prove to be surprising. But that’s all based on the idea that we’re going to play out that story.“

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon has already been renewed for a second season, so it seems like Zabel is going to have the opportunity to tell this Carol story, if he chooses to flesh it out in season 2.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon has the following synopsis: Daryl (Reedus) washes ashore in France and struggles to piece together how he got there and why. The series tracks his journey across a broken but resilient France as he hopes to find a way back home. As he makes the journey, though, the connections he forms along the way complicate his ultimate plan.

Showrunner Zabel serves as executive producer alongside Reedus, Scott M. Gimple, Angela Kang, Greg Nicotero, Brian Bockrath, and Daniel Percival. AMC Studios is producing. The first season of the series will consist of six episodes. Like Dead City, Daryl Dixon has already been renewed for a second season.

Reedus is joined in the cast by Anne Charrier (The Last Deadly Mission), Eriq Ebanouey (Fox Hunt), Laika Blanc Francard (My Night), newcomer Louis Puech Scigliuzzi, and Romain Levi (The Tunnel). All of these cast members have “series regular” status – but the only things we know about their characters are their names. Charrier is playing Genet, Ebanouey is Fallou, Blanc Francard is Sylvie, Levi is Codron, and Puech Scigliuzzi is Laurent. We know a bit more about characters being played by Clémence Poésy (Tenet) and Adam Nagaitis (The Terror). Poésy is playing Isabelle, “a member of a progressive religious group, who joins forces with Daryl (Reedus) on a journey across France and finds herself confronting her dark past in Paris.” The character Nagaitis is playing is Quinn, “a displaced Brit who has become powerful in post-apocalyptic Paris as a black marketeer and the owner of the Demimonde, a sexy underground nightclub.”

Have you been watching The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, and do you want to see a Carol story play out in future episodes? Let us know by leaving a comment below.