The Walking Dead Review: Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride Reunite in Amped-up Daryl Dixon Season 2

Together or apart, Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride are a tour de force in the exhilarating new season.

By Cameron Bonomolo

The French word "dépaysant" means "a nice change of scenery," the Parisian nun Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) tells the American Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) on The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol. "It makes you look at things a different way." Daryl and Carol (Melissa McBride) were the last two remaining characters from the first season still with The Walking Dead by the end of its 11-season run on AMC, and now the fan favorites are the last to get their own Walking Dead spinoff in a new setting following Maggie and Negan (in The Walking Dead: Dead City) and Rick and Michonne (in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live).

When the Walking Dead Daryl and Carol series returns with its sophomore season premiere (September 29th on AMC and AMC+), two weeks have passed since Daryl delivered Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) to the Union de l'Espoir at the Nest: the Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey in Normandy, France. "I don't know if this is the place I'm supposed to be," Daryl tells Isabelle, but he's stranded there until Union leader Losang (Joel de la Fuente) can arrange another boat ride back home to the Commonwealth in Ohio. 

As Daryl questions whether the people he left behind are still thinking about him, Isabelle begins to question Losang's motives and his religious dogma that Laurent — who was born to a zombie-bitten mother at the onset of the zombie apocalypse 13 years earlier — is immune to bites as the religious movement's prophesied messiah. This "false hope" makes the Union a target for Madame Genet (Anne Charrier) and her Pouvoir Du Vivant, an autocratic movement that aims to create a new France by unleashing an army of Ampers: a stronger and faster breed of amped-up Les affamés (walkers) engineered in a lab.

Meanwhile, halfway around the world, Carol has tracked down her missing friend to Freeport, Maine, where she meets a kind stranger: a pilot named Ash (The Resident's Manish Dayal). Carol convinces him to fly her to France under false pretenses, and by the end of the Greg Nicotero-directed first episode, Daryl and Carol are set on separate paths that will inevitably intersect as they are connecté et dépaysé (both connected and disoriented) in foreign surroundings. It's a spoiler to reveal when Daryl and Carol reunite over the course of the six-episode season, but rest assured that fans will be satisfied (and teary-eyed) when the long-awaited Caryl reunion finally happens in the most emotional scene of the season. (All six episodes were made available to critics.)

Showrunner David Zabel (who co-wrote a 2006 episode of ER that earned him a Humanitas Prize, awarded to writers "whose work explores the human condition in a nuanced, meaningful way") and the Daryl Dixon writers' room have a natural ability to tap into the intrinsic humanity at the core of the zombie drama, which was always about the living and not the living dead. If Daryl and Carol are the beating heart of The Walking Dead, Reedus and McBride are the soul. 

While the two characters go all the way back to the first season in 2010, the "Caryl" relationship as we know it didn't start to form until Season 2. Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol includes some well-placed flashbacks to the Season 2 episodes "Cherokee Rose" and "Pretty Much Dead Already," two essential episodes that forged the unbreakable bond between Daryl and Carol — both survivors of abuse — after the disappearance and death of Carol's young daughter, Sophia (Madison Lintz). It's a loss that has haunted Carol ever since, and as she grapples with these ghosts from the past, Carol's emotional turmoil proves to be a riveting showcase for the incomparable McBride. And Reedus — who has always brought sensitivity and vulnerability to a character who was conceived as "a mini-Merle," fleshing out his layers over 11 seasons — delivers another understated and compelling performance that makes Reedus and McBride the perfect pairing.

In an interview with ComicBook, TWD Universe chief content officer Scott M. Gimple likened the new season to "an indie French horror movie." It's an apt comparison, because The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon is like nothing else on television. A Walking Dead show with French-language subtitled dialogue? Beautifully shot cinematic landscapes, natural lighting, and on-location shoots across the French countryside? And between amped-up walker kills and a one-shot action sequence in Episode 3 — a knife-hurling, neck-snapping, guts-stabbing, bone-breaking, breathless melee that is more like a fight scene out of 2003's Oldboy than any fight scene ever staged on The Walking Dead — the season is as action-packed as it is artsy. Mon Dieu!

This is an adrenalized, action-heavy season that foregoes much of the religious undercurrent of the more measured and faith-based first season, but its balanced mix of heartfelt drama and heart-pounding zombie action means Daryl Dixon is more epic than ever. Even if the season is a layover on the way to the upcoming Spain-set and shot Season 3, the new chapter in the book of Daryl and Carol is dépaysant.

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Rating: 4.5 out of 5

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol premieres Sunday, September 29th on AMC and AMC+.

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