The Walking Dead's Norman Reedus Says Daryl and Mercer Might Become Friends

Warning: this story contains spoilers for Sunday's "New Haunts" episode of The Walking Dead. "Sometimes we have to set each other up to win," the armored General Mercer tells trooper recruit Daryl in "New Haunts." 30 days after Alexandria's residents relocate to the Commonwealth, Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Rosita (Christian Serratos) are earning their stripes in the Commonwealth Army. Putting the Alexandrians through boot camp is Marines military man Mercer (Michael James Shaw), flunking Daryl when he fails to work as a unit during a walker-killing team-building exercise. Though they don't see eye-to-eye just yet, Reedus says it's only a matter of time before the Mercer-Dixon dynamic turns from friendly fire to friends. 

"I knew as soon as he and I were kind of [butting heads] that we were going to team up and be friends. I knew that was coming," Reedus said in an exclusive interview with ComicBook's Brandon Davis. "But that relationship's interesting because, as backward as that place Commonwealth is... he's the poster for the place. He's the hero of the place. They love him there."

Mercer takes Daryl and Rosita along for the spoiled Sebastian Milton's (Teo Rapp-Olsson) "advanced military training," teaching the privileged punk how to survive and kill rotters. Though the Commonwealth's upper-class elite looks down on the working class, "This place is as good as anything I've seen. It'll give you a decent life if you can cut it, and I want you to succeed," Mercer tells Daryl. "But you gotta get out of your own damn way."

"You can tell that he doesn't all think it's roses right off the bat. And I think that's something that is very evident to him, to Daryl, and to Rosita, when they meet him for the first time. So I kind of had a feeling," Reedus said of Daryl's growing understanding with General Mercer. "I was like, I know how The Walking Dead works. So it's like, we hate each other, we're probably going to be friends. It's not my first rodeo. I know what's what." 

Five months in the future, soldier Daryl and a squad of white-armored troopers show up at the Hilltop gates in a tense standoff with leader Maggie Rhee (Lauren Cohan). "He's very reluctant. I mean, Daryl's been wearing the same pants since season two, you know what I'm saying?" Reedus said of the six-month time skip ending last week's episode. "He's very kind of... He's himself. You ever put a dog in the shower, and they're like, 'Yah!' That's kind of what [Daryl's like]." 

A graduate of West Point and a military veteran, Mercer's army has enlisted a different breed of soldier in Trooper Dixon and Trooper Espinosa.

"His first impression of this new group is that they're tough," Shaw said. "And they have each other's back in a way that... even though our soldiers in the Commonwealth, there's an allegiance, but [Daryl and Rosita] have each other's back in a way that is more like family. And he observes that right away, and that's something new to him, I think." 

New episodes of The Walking Dead: The Final Season air Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter and @NewsOfTheDead for TWD Universe coverage all season long.