TWD: Daryl Dixon’s New Strong Zombies, Explained

[This story contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon episode 3.] “LES MORTS SONT NES ICI.” Translation: “THE DEAD ARE BORN HERE.” That’s what was written on the walls of a French lab seen on The Walking Dead: World Beyond, seemingly suggesting that the zombie virus that spread across the globe like wildfire in 2010 started with the Violet and Primrose teams at La Biomédicine DDMI. While the origins of The Walking Dead Wildfire Virus remain a mystery, new spin-off Daryl Dixon revealed fresh intel on what CDC virologist Dr. Edwin Jenner (Noah Emmerich) referred to as “variant cohorts“: walkers that are stronger, smarter, and faster than the typical zombie.

We saw one such super-zombie on World Beyond when a French man (Oryan Landa) confronted a female French doctor (Carey Van Driest) who worked with the Violet team. A decade post-outbreak, the doctor came to la Biomédicine because she hoped the team returned from a conference in Toledo, Ohio, and resumed their work at the lab so that “they might end all this, even after all this time.”

“End this? You started this. All the teams,” the man said in French. “Then you made it worse.” He then shot and killed the doctor, who reanimated seconds later as a walker with unnatural strength and speed. As it turns out, “the dead are born here” wasn’t referring to les affamès (what the French call “the hungry ones”). 

The graffiti referred to the research of Pouvoir Des Vivants (“Power of the Living”), a French movement that started after the initial outbreak.Research that the American Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) destroyed when he went overboard from a cargo ship in the Gulf of Càdiz off the southern shores of France.

Before the premiere episode of Daryl Dixon ended with the reveal that Pouvoir Des Vivants leader Madame Genet (Anne Charrier) and a French doctor (François Delaive) have been shipping zombie test subjects across the Atlantic Ocean from America to France, Daryl encountered the brûlant: “burners,” walkers that can cause infectious burns with their searing touch and acidic blood. 

On Sunday’s “Paris Sera Toujours Paris” episode, Daryl and Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) watched as burners fell from apartment windows to the ground stories below… only to then stand up and keep attacking. At the Maison Mère hotel in Paris, the French doctor continued his zombie experiments with the test subjects salvaged from the ship. 

Just as Madame Genet said the Pouvoir is “making progress,” two scientists injected a restrained zombie test subject with a mysterious serum. 

The black-eyed walker then became agitated and erratic, ripped its chains from the walls with a burst of super-strength… and then violently imploded as blackened blood spurted from its head. The amped-up super zombie lasted just 18 seconds. To that, Genet said: “Continue.”

See how The Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, and The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon are connected in our breakdown here.

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD (and find us on Facebook) and follow @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for more TWD Universe coverage.