How Did Daryl Dixon End Up In France On The Walking Dead?

When “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon” first hit AMC, my mom watched it before I did. At the time, I asked her how the crossbow-wielding fan favorite character managed to get from the East coast of America to France while living in a zombie-filled apocalyptic wasteland. “Some bad guys got him,” she answered simply. On paper, it’s a laughable explanation for a sudden, drastic change of scenery over a decade into a franchise that’s typically only moved its characters around in ways that make sense. After I caught up with the show, though, it became clear that she was right: Daryl’s big move boils down to the introduction of new villains whose misdeeds just so happen to take place in an area adjacent to one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Behind the scenes, Reedus and any returning cast and crew members from the flagship series also made the move to France for shooting — no doubt a major change after 12 years spent shooting mostly in Atlanta, Georgia. The “bad guys” explanation is actually deceptively simple, as the show spends much of its first season dancing around the details of how Daryl ended up abroad before revealing the story (and the weird motivations) of his captors in episode 5. “The Book of Carol,” as the second season is subtitled, also reintroduces Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride), who was Daryl’s partner in survival for much of “The Walking Dead.” By the end of season 2, the pair have reunited, but they’ve also left France behind. That’s another long story from a show that loves telling long stories.

“The Walking Dead” started dropping hints about what Daryl’s spinoff series might entail a good while before it ended. In a season 10 flashback episode, Daryl withdraws to nature, the place where he’s most comfortable, to try to figure out what happened to Rick (Andrew Lincoln) when he supposedly died. There, he met a woman named Leah (Lynn Collins) and her dog, er, Dog, both of whom he fell for. Of course, since this is the bleakest show in the world, Leah later revealed some dangerous tendencies and sketchy allegiances, and Daryl eventually had to kill her.

The last two seasons of “The Walking Dead” tell us everything we need to know about the “Daryl Dixon” series without actually introducing its plot or characters. Late-era “Walking Dead” Daryl is a loner, but he’s also capable of showing love and still has strong ties to Carol. He’s likewise a hero through and through, even when it nearly gets him killed. All of this sets the stage for his final exit from the main series when, in the show’s finale, Daryl finds out that Rick is still alive. At the close of season 11, he decides to hit the road once again to find his old friend.

Of course, Daryl doesn’t appear in the Rick-centric series “The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live,” because by the time Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Rick reunite on screen on that show, we’ve already seen Daryl get sidetracked to an entirely different continent in his own spin-off. Fans are shown Daryl passed out on a small boat at the very beginning of “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon,” but the full backstory behind the moment isn’t explained until episode 5.

While on his quest to find Rick, Daryl runs low on fuel in Maine and decides to help some people capture walkers in exchange for gas to get home. The man who works at the gas station, Juno (John Ales), is a real piece of work, and after he kills a boy named T.J. (Martin Martinez) in cold blood, Daryl confronts him. A group that’s later revealed to be called the Power of the Living (or Pouvoir Du Vivant) captures both Daryl and Juno after their fight and takes them on board a ship crewed by their Parisian squad. On board, Daryl discovers that the Pouvoir Du Vivant leader, Marion Genet (Anne Charrier), is conducting twisted experiments on different walker variants in order to better understand the mechanisms of the virus.

Later on, the whole thing gets a little bit Victor Hugo (and also a little bit “Mad Max,” for different reasons) as Genet’s own flashback reveals that she was a mistreated museum worker on strike before the virus hit, and is using the Pouvoir organization to claim power that was hoarded by the upper classes early on in the apocalypse. Still, the group is violent and sometimes ruthless, and when Daryl and Juno try to escape the ship, the latter gets ripped to shreds by a walker being kept for experiments. Ever the reluctant leader, Daryl led a mutiny on the ship and played dead atop a small escape vessel after running afoul of Genet. For some reason, the Pouvoir crew does their experiments aboard a ship in international waters, so they got Daryl most of the way to France before he ditched the big boat and drifted through the last leg of the journey on his own.

Though McBride was initially announced as the co-lead for this spinoff, she had to step away from season 1 due to scheduling issues. Her voice can first be heard in the first season, when she and Daryl briefly talk via a spotty radio connection. In her first in-the-flesh appearance in the show, she runs down a man who’s driving Daryl’s motorcycle in Maine, playing innocent before she whacks him with a wrench and traps him in the trunk of her car. The show’s first season ends on a badass note, with Carol riding off on Daryl’s bike, hot on his trail.

Still, she’s in Maine, and it’s not easy to get a ride to France several years after the end of the world. Carol gets some intel on Daryl’s location from the gas station guys, but her mode of transport turns out to be a small plane piloted by a man named Ash Patel (Manish Dayal). Carol meets Ash at his home, and though the two bond, he’s unwilling to leave the place he’s clearly turned into a shrine to the memory of his dead son. Carol has always been willing to do whatever it takes to get what she wants, and she does it here, too, when she lies and tells Ash that her daughter Sophia (who definitely turned into a zombie and was the victim of a classic Rick Grimes headshot in season 2 of “The Walking Dead”) is alive in France.

The plan works, and Ash flies Carol to Greenland. From there, she carries on to France, where she eventually reunites with Daryl despite the overt lack of Google Maps that’s available in this post-apocalyptic hellscape. The pair finish out season 2 with a plan to head to England, though Variety has reported that the show’s third season is filming in Spain.

“The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon” is currently streaming on AMC+.