Norman Reedus on How [SPOILER]’s Return Came Together

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 1 finale.]

Norman Reedus‘ Daryl Dixon was on a mission in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 1 finale, and it was the same mission he’s had all season long: get back home. What he didn’t expect was to feel at home somewhere else.

Leaving home and finding you belong somewhere else was the emotional core of Season 1, so said showrunner David Zabel at TWD: Daryl Dixon panel at New York Comic Con on Thursday, October 12, where the finale was screened in full for the excited audience of TWD fans and press. That theme rang true in Daryl’s final moments of the finale, which on top of scoring the historic Mont Saint-Michel as its filming location for The Nest also filmed a Daryl-walker battle on the beaches of Normandy.

The setting had deep emotional meaning for Daryl. As revealed to Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) earlier in the episode, Daryl’s grandfather died on that beach on D-Day in World War II. Daryl had bitter feelings towards his late grandfather, who he said left his pregnant wife behind when enlisting and never came back. Isabelle said fighting for what you believe in was a noble way to die, but Daryl said that didn’t apply, since his grandfather hardly got to fight before he was struck down on the beach.

Leaders of The Nest arranged for Daryl’s safe sea passage to North America. He trekked from Mont Saint-Michel (and the comforts of “home” it could provide — namely the possibility of a romance with Isabelle) to the beach to catch his boat home. The journey ended with three unexpected arrivals.

First, Daryl found himself at the graveyard of the fallen D-Day soldiers on Normandy Beach. He found his grandfather’s grave and gained a new understanding of dying for something bigger than yourself. Second was a pack of walkers coming out of the dilapidated beach bunkers. He made quick work of fighting them off with his new signature weapon, a medieval flail. The third arrival was Laurent’s (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi), who followed Daryl to the beach after he left without saying goodbye. Daryl’s final scene of the season showed him struggling to decide between getting on the boat and going home, or going with Laurent and making The Nest his new home.

Daryl Dixon leaves The Nest (Mont Saint-Michel) in ‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’ Season 1 Episode 6 finale (Credit: Emmanuel Guimier/AMC)

And then, there was a fourth surprise arrival that thrilled fans at NYCC (and undoubtedly viewers watching the episode at home on AMC). The final scene of Season 1 was back in the U.S. The scene began with a shot of someone riding Daryl’s famous motorcycle down an empty road. A lone car appeared behind him, its windows heavily tinted. The biker dismounted and shot at the car’s grill, forcing the driver out. That driver was none other than Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride), who Reedus announced would be a Daryl Dixon Season 2 series regular during the NYCC finale panel. (Season 2 will be called The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol.)

Carol was searching for Daryl when she discovered this man on his bike. She bested the stranger and stuffed him in her trunk to question him about Daryl’s whereabouts. He said he got the bike in a trade not far away from where they stood. Before she shut the trunk, trapping the man inside, she threatened that if he was lying, she wouldn’t come back. The season ended with Carol driving off on Daryl’s motorcycle.

Fans heard Carol’s voice on a radio in a brief cameo in Episode 5 (in a flashback conversation with Daryl while he was still in Maine), making them wonder if she would appear on-screen in the finale. At a press conference after the finale screening, Reedus, Zabel, Scott M. Gimple (Chief Content Officer of the Walking Dead Universe, and Greg Nicotero (Executive Producer) told TV Insider how McBride’s epic return to Daryl Dixon came to be, confirming that Carol was always going to be part of the series, even though she exited from being part of Season 1 in 2022.

“Relocating to Europe became logistically untenable for Melissa,” AMC said in a statement at the time. At the NYCC 2023 panel, Zabel said Daryl Dixon had filmed about three of Season 2’s six episodes (with SAG-AFTRA permission), much of it in France. McBride has been part of this filming process. Season 2 will hopefully see these two best friends reunited.

As for filming Carol’s finale scene, Reedus told TV Insider he wasn’t on set that day. “She filmed a little bit before without me,” Reedus said. “We never shoot exactly chronologically.” As longtime friends and executive producers of Season 2, Reedus said, “I talk to Melissa all the time.”

Zabel was on set for McBride’s scene, as was Nicotero. “She was very excited to play the character again,” Zabel told TV Insider, “but it was interesting because everyone around her was different. There’s nobody there that she knew except for me [and Nicotero], and she didn’t know me that long. She hadn’t met the director, she hadn’t met the crew.”

“She knew the bike,” Reedus added with a grin.

Melissa McBride and Norman Reedus ride Daryl’s motorcycle in The Walking Dead (Credit: Eli Ade/AMC)

“I think it was a weird, cool feeling,” Zabel continued. “And that’s sort of the idea, ultimately, of the show is like these characters displaced to a different environment with different people around them and how that impacts them. She had that real experience. She was super stoked.”

Nicotero, special make-up effects supervisor and primary director for The Walking Dead, said there’s a narrative benefit to excluding Carol from Season 1. (He also confirmed at the panel that he directs the Daryl Dixon Season 2 premiere.)

“What’s interesting about this show — and talking about the beginning of Walking Dead where you had a really core group of people, that small group — I think having the show concentrate on Daryl specifically and his experiences, to lay the groundwork for that and then to bring Carol in later, it allows for richer storytelling,” he told TV Insider. “It just doesn’t rely on two characters that you already know because then there are less places to go. I think it allowed Daryl to grow.”

“And the thing I love about having Norman and Melissa as executive producers is, they’re involved in their character storytelling,” Nicotero continued. “In the mornings [on set], I’ll always go to Norman’s trailer and we talk about the scenes together. There’s a lot of collaboration, and that feels great from an artist’s standpoint to be able to collaborate. Norman, when he got hired on The Walking Dead, it was because Frank Darabont [who developed and executive produced The Walking Dead Season 1] saw him and loved him and told me one day, ‘Call John Carpenter and find out what it’s like to work with Norman Reedus. I really like him and I want to work with him.’ I called John, and John said he’s an incredibly intuitive actor. He comes to set prepared and he really, really knows his character. He’s proven that to me over and over and over again. I love what he’s done with Daryl. I feel like this Daryl Dixon has improved 20 fold to what he was able to do on the other show, and I’m really excited to see it.”

“One other thing about that,” Zabel chimed in, “Obviously with Norman, but then with Melissa later, [there was] a lot of collaboration with me and the writers because we’d be fools not to rely on actors who know these characters as well as they do. It’s a different thing. It’s kind of a gift because they know so much about who they are already that you want to build on that. You don’t want to get stuck and stagnate in that.”

“One of the first conversations I ever had with Melissa were, what are the places you think that Carol needs to go next?” the showrunner continued. “What are the things that are unresolved? What are the stories that feel like the next evolution of the character while being true to the character? Same thing with Norman. We’re not changing the character. We’re not changing who he is. We’re not changing everything we know about him, but how can we allow him to continue to evolve in a way that feels real, but also feels like he’s moving forward?”

Find out those answers in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, Season 1, Available Now, AMC+