Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’ On AMC, Where The OG Zombie Survivor Finds Himself In France Protecting A Boy Who Might Save Humanity

When we heard that one of the many Walking Dead spinoffs being planned was going to concentrate on Daryl Dixon and Carol Peletier, we were happy, because they were always our favorite OG survivors from the first years of the show. Even as the show was developed and Melissa McBride, who plays Carol, dropped out, we were still happy; Daryl was always one of the franchise’s most complete characters, and seeing him in a new environment was going to open up a lot of dramatic possibilities. Now that the spinoff is here, is that the case?

THE WALKING DEAD: DARYL DIXON: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We hear echoes of a girl saying “You should have a happy ending, too.” Then we see a tiny rowboat in the middle of the ocean, turned over, a person lying on its hull as it floats towards the shore.

The Gist: Floating on that boat is Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus); he’s unconscious as the boat finds its way to shore. He wakes up face-down on a beach, with no idea where he is or how he got there.

Sings in French tell him that he’s certainly not in America anymore. He goes into the nearby town and finds an abandoned boat where he can find something dry to wear and get some water, weapons and supplies. He also finds a tape recorder; after listening to the boat’s owner trying to find safe haven during the zombie apocalypse, Daryl adds his own entry. He came from the Commonwealth, he says, and if he doesn’t make it, “I want them to know I tried. Hell, I’m still trying.”

He finds an abandoned store and soon finds himself surrounded by walkers. As he systematically kills them with a knife and a harpoon, one of them touches him and burns his arm.

Daryl finds two people in a courtyard, a woman named Mirabelle (Carmen Kassovitz) and a supposedly blind old man named Guillaume (Bernard Bloch). He cautiously offers a trade of food for some of his supplies, but when local militia soldiers show up, a fight ensues. Genet helps Daryl kill one of them, but then the Guillaume knocks Daryl out; he hazily sees Genet killing the other soldier and she and the old man leaving with his stuff.

He wakes up in a hospital bed in what seems to be a convent. A nun named Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) is caring for him. She explains that this group of nuns have been around since the zombie apocalypse started 12 years ago, and they manage to scrape by as well as defend themselves. Daryl meets Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi), a boy in their care. He seems to be wise beyond his years.

He gets freaked out, however, when he sees that the abbey’s priest is now a walker, but he’s held in a cell. The hope, Laurent says, is that he can “rise again.” As he tries to leave, though, Isabelle tells him that she saw him battle the guerriers, i.e. the militia soldiers, and thinks he’s “the messenger” Laurent predicted would arrive. She needs him to escort Laurent to a place called L’Union, in the north. He needs a proper place to grow up and be educated because, well, he might just be the Messiah.

Daryl thinks this is all too strange and leaves. But when militia leader Cordon (Romain Levi), after Genet led him to the dead soldiers (one was his brother) and pinned it on Daryl, he sticks around.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Of course, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon is one of the many, many spinoffs that’s part of the Walking Dead franchise, this one featuring an original cast member. It was supposed to feature both Daryl and Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride), but she bowed out of the show when production moved to Europe. We will see Carol show up in a few episodes during this season.

Our Take: The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon was created by David Zabel, who’s a longtime TV writer and producer (ER, Stumptown, Dark Angel) but new to the TWD franchise. It’s always interesting to see what a new showrunner can contribute to a franchise that can seem like more of the same, even if the locale shifts to somewhere new (Dead City comes to mind).

Daryl Dixon puts Daryl in a completely new situation, one where his copious survival skills will come into play, but gives him a mission beyond just survival. Yes, he was a member of the Commonwealth’s military, but it never really seemed like he was ever fully into doing something for the greater good. If he was doing anything beyond his own survival, it was for people he loved like Carol or Judith. As he tells Isabelle, he ended up in France via “a bunch of bad decisions,” ones that are going to come back to haunt him as he makes his way north.

Yes, Daryl still has a personal motivation to take Laurent, Isabelle and Sylvie (Laïka Blanc-Francard) to L’Union; he wants to get to an active port and somehow find his way back to the states. But as he fights the guerriers at the abbey, he knows that Laurent and the two nuns need his help, even if it’s just to deliver the boy to somewhere he can grow up and thrive with other kids.

Daryl was always our favorite TWD character because we knew that under his seemingly mercenary exterior is someone who deeply cares for certain people in his life. And as “creepy” as Laurent comes off, the battle with the guerriers shows that the kid needs the help of someone like him in order to survive. As is usual in the TWD universe, the walkers are never the biggest danger; it’s the people who are out for themselves.

Of course, there will always be existential human threats, and we see them in the form of both Cordon and Genet (Anne Charrier), who may or may not have something to do with the experiments that not only brought about the zombie virus, but the experiments that will try to find a cure. Cordon seems like more of the old-fashioned mercenary type; we’re still not sure where on the enemy scale Genet will fall.

But with Reedus doing his usual stellar job as the brooding but caring Daryl, TWD: Daryl Dixon is on pretty solid dramatic ground.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Genet gets information from a ship captain about a near-mutiny that was apparently started by Daryl on his ship; the captain quelched the mutiny but the walkers that were locked away for an experiment escaped.

Sleeper Star: Louis Puech Scigliuzzi portrays Laurent’s wiser-than-his-age personality in a way that’s not artificial, which sets the character up as an effective foil for Daryl’s gruffness.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Daryl tries to leave the abbey and use the radio, Isabelle says that it’s broken, though she gave him the impression earlier that it was working. “You’re fucking with me,” he says to the nun.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon promises to be a bit of a different story than we’ve seen in the TWD franchise, but we’re also just happy we’ll get to see more of Daryl being the caring bad-ass he’s always been.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.