When it was first announced that the Daryl Dixon character (played by Norman Reedus) was going to be getting a spin-off once The Walking Dead reached the end of its eleven season run, the project wasn’t intended to be a solo adventure. Daryl was going to be joined on the show by his longtime friend Carol, played by Melissa McBride. Then came the surprising decision to set the show in Europe, which caused McBride to drop out because she couldn’t relocate to Europe for extended periods of time. Sometime this fall, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon will begin airing on AMC and AMC+ – but a set pic that made its way online and was shared by Reedus and McBride’s fellow Walking Dead alum Jeffrey Dean Morgan (now starring in the spin-off The Walking Dead: Dead City) has revealed that McBride’s Carol will not be entirely absent from the show!
Here are Reedus and McBride, pictured together on the set of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, along with Morgan’s comments on the matter:
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 David 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.
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.”
Although McBride will apparently be showing up in the series, I wouldn’t expect her to have a major role. In fact, chances are that she’d only be featured in flashbacks… because if Daryl has mysteriously washed up in France, how would he notify Carol in the post-apocalyptic world, and how would she be able to follow him over there within just six episodes?
Well, we’ll see how it all plays out when The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon reaches airwaves later this year.
Are you glad to see that Carol will be appearing on the Daryl show after all? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.