Another chapter of The Walking Dead universe will be wrapping up this year, with Fear the Walking Dead playing out its swan song across the eighth and final season. But there will still be expansions a-plenty, including Norman Reedus’ globe-trotting trek to France for the upcoming eponymous spinoff Daryl Dixon. The new series kicked off its production back in October 2022, without a whole lot of info revealed. Now, though, we have our first handful of images from the new show, and ooh-la-la, it looks like Daryl will be rocking a new form of transportation that bears little in common with his traditional motorcycle.
Let’s go through the new pics below while awaiting The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’s arrival within the 2023 TV schedule, starting with his new wheels (and hooves).
Daryl Got Himself A Horse And Buggy, Y'all
For the majority of his time within the core Walking Dead narrative, Daryl had a penchant for motorcycles as a way to get around, even when it made absolutely no sense to have a loud-as-shit vehicle bopping around on the highway or down woodsy paths. (It was also questionable why there was always fuel for his motorcycle, but so be it.) Clearly, he couldn’t have ridden any such terrestrial vehicles across an entire ocean — save for another ice age happening, which would be a truly wild reveal for this franchise — so it only makes sense that he has a new set-up while in a completely new setting.
Perhaps understandably, Daryl traded in one straddle-mounted ride for another, and looks to be rocking a horse and quasi-carriage situation now. That’s a beefy looking horse, which is probably required given all the supplies that Reedus’ character appears to be hauling around in the back part. Are there any other characters he’s hiding back there, or is it just like food and bedding and weapons and stuff? Also, while presumably quieter in action, a massive horse and attachment would be a lot harder to hide behind leaves in a pinch. So I’m intrigued to see how the traveling side of Daryl’s journey plays out.
Interestingly, Norman Reedus shared previously that one of the main reasons Daryl rides a motorcycle on The Walking Dead is because the actor had zero interest in riding a horse, and wanted something else. So does this mean he’s been trained properly in the meantime, or was this just a miserable experience for him?
French Zombie Fashion Holds Up
We have no idea what the population situation is like in France this many years after the walker-pocalypse, so it’s hard to know whether the walkers that are milling about may be from the earliest stages of infection, or if those remaining are mostly the corpses of latter-day survivors. Judging by the seemingly still intact clothing on the zombies seen above, I’m guessing it’s more of the latter.
Did anyone else out there have a vague anticipation to see new walkers from other parts of the world, thinking that there might be some noteworthy variances in appearance? I did, against my better logic, but there’s nothing too significant about these rotting bastards in particular. I feel like this image was more to show off the architecture as being different from “trees and places made out of wood” that made up a lot of TWD’s location aesthetics.
Fun fact: Robert Kirkman's Walking Dead comic series does have a canonical standalone spinoff subtitled Alien, respectively written and illustrated by the great Brian K. Vaughn and Marcos Martin, which takes place in Barcelona. I don't necessarily think that project will tie into Daryl's, considering Rick Grimes' brother is a character therein, but that would be a wild way to make this spinoff stand out.
Daryl Gets Caught!
Our third shot is the only one hinting at other living and sentient beings in the area beyond Daryl, though it looks like things don’t immediately get off on the right foot. I can see why that’d be the case, considering Daryl is unmistakably American, and doesn’t exactly come off as an empathetic gentleman in any capacity. So here, it would appear that he’s being forced to kneel before the leader of whatever community he stumbles across first.
Someone’s holding a spear of some kind back there, which looks to be adorned with more materials than just wood and fabric. And there’s also a big tree in the background with something wrapped around it a bunch of times. Was it for holding Daryl captive, or for other reasons?
Also, while it appears as if Daryl’s hands are tied behind his back in this shot, what’s up with the thing around his neck? It looks less like it’s part of the binding process, and more like it’s covering something up, and may have even been part of what he was wearing in the horse shot above. But is it covering up a cut that’s now healing? Or did he possibly hurt his neck in other ways? Or, much less likely, did he get a tattoo of someone’s name that he’s now really, really regretting?
While awaiting news for when The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon will debut on AMC, you can rewatch the entire flagship series with a Netflix subscription, while HBO’s The Last of Us is currently delivering a different kind of post-apocalyptic adaptation.
