The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’s mediocre second season ends with a whimper

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’s mediocre second season bids adieu

At the New York Comic-Con panel for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon last month, series star Norman Reedus made a tall promise. He told an audience of thousands that the show’s season-two finale was one of the franchise’s best episodes in years. The statement was met with thunderous applause. Suffice it to say, Reedus’ enthusiasm made me hope that Daryl Dixon would deliver. It has been a long time since TWD fully reinvigorated itself (save for a few lovely moments like Rick and Michonne’s charged romance in this year’s The Ones Who Live).

Sadly, the only thing the Daryl Dixon finale elicits overall is…a shrug. “Au Revoir Les Enfantes” is a mediocre goodbye and further proof that The Walking Dead can’t truly revamp until it goes through a creative overhaul. And that’s only because AMC insists on keeping it alive as a cash cow. For now, TWD keeps mining from a dry well with spin-offs about original characters. They face new threats in different locations, but that doesn’t change the strategy’s inherent flaw: Nothing is inventive, scary, or heart-tugging anymore. We’ve seen it all. What once used to be a cool prestige cable drama has flipped into something like a familiar, rote procedural.

Don’t get me wrong: This finale has pivotal moments with Daryl and Carol (Melissa McBride), who have become understandably inseparable since their reunion. Now they’re forced to let go of past demons to move ahead and survive. This means Carol bravely faces hallucinations of her dead daughter, while Daryl reckons with Isabelle’s demise. But everything goes down so damn predictably that the excitement is sucked out of it. Ultimately, the finale just feels like a perfunctory setup for season three.

Daryl and Carol’s priority mission is to get Laurent to safety. After all, he’s not some miracle teen even if he was born out of a walker’s womb. He’s a regular kid who deserves to live as normally as possible in the post-apocalypse. Still, the surviving members of Losang’s group are determined to capture Laurent. So the plan is that Ash will fly Daryl, Carol, and the kid back to America before that happens. The only catch, Ash explains, is that the plane is too small to carry all of them. At least one person must stay behind. After some back-and-forth, Daryl decides it will be him because he’s been there longer and knows his way around.

They’re rushing to leave (with Daryl having acquired the additional fuel) when Losang’s right-hand woman, Jacinta, catches up to them with a small but mighty army. Now, unfortunately, Jacinta is so unconvincing in her villainy that it’s obvious she’s going to die without harming anyone else. It’s a huge reason why the finale lacks urgency, as it’s impossible to buy into her antagonistic ways. So there’s zero surprises when Ash jets off the runway with Laurent in the passenger seat, the two rejoicing as everyone looks on. Carol obviously stays behind at the last minute to help Daryl fend off their enemies.

There is no indication of if Ash and Laurent make it to the Commonwealth, although Carol fantasizes later that Ezekiel is showing Ash around and Judith is teaching Laurent how to use a katana.( Sure, leave us in the lurch about their fates.) Meanwhile, Daryl and Carol’s next step is to go to England in hopes of finding a way back to the U.S. This feels unnecessarily complicated—but, hey, we had to get rid of France somehow. They get help from two Scots (mutual friends of Fallou), who agree to guide them through the 32-mile undersea railway tunnel connecting both countries. Codron, who mends fences with Daryl and apologizes for trying to kill him multiple times, also accompanies them.

And just like that, Daryl bids adieu to the place he spent several months in as the five of them start their nine-hour trek via this dark, grimy, and claustrophobic Chunnel. Pretty quickly, we see the tunnel is infested with various types of the undead. But even worse is the presence of guano, a.k.a. literal bat shit. Breathing it in can cause hallucinations, the Scots warn. Lo and behold, Daryl and Carol’s vision starts getting hazy—and, soon enough, they’re seeing their departed loved ones.

In Carol’s case, she comes face-to-face with Sophia, whose face she has a hard time remembering. All Carol can see is her daughter as a walker. But she talks to the vision anyway, confronting her subconscious and making peace with losing a child. Meanwhile, Daryl is about to get shot by the Scots when “Isabelle” urges him to fight. I’ll be honest: When they revealed a hooded figure approaching Daryl, I briefly hoped it would be someone from TWD. Michael Rooker’s Merle Dixon would’ve been a fantastic surprise. Ditto Andrew Lincoln reprising Rick Grimes. Alas, it’s the woman to whom Daryl confessed his love pretty recently, so I’ll accept it.

Anyway, the two fierce fighters defeat the bat-excreta-induced blur, kill the Scots, put on masks that they found, and carry on their journey. We already know that once they come out of the Chunnel and reach England, Daryl and Carol are going to find themselves in yet another country, as season three is all about The Walking Dead’s Spanish Inquisition. Let’s see if the show improves by then.

Stray observations

• Not to sound repetitive but I miss when TWD had genuinely dangerous villains. Even this year’s The Ones Who Live wasted Terry O’Quinn as an evil militia man.

• I will give Daryl Dixon credit for innovating with the types of walkers. We’re introduced to the hyped-up Ampers that attack other walkers, which is game-changing if TWD invests in fleshing it out. The finale also sees Daryl and Carol battling tunnel zombies with bioluminescence, adding to the surrealism of it all.
• I will also say that the sight of walkers in a psychiatric hospital, some of them patients who are still tied to their beds, was alarming.
• Norman Reedus and Louis Puech Scigliuzzi, who plays Laurent, sing The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” when the episode opens. It’s the same needle drop at the end of the hour.
• Do we think Laurent and Ash really made it to America, let alone the Commonwealth? Or will season three focus on their adventures as well?
• The same goes for characters like Fallou, who has been with Daryl Dixon from the beginning. With the show changing its base to Spain, who knows if Eriq Ebouaney will reprise his role.
• As a huge fan of the early TWD seasons, I hope this spin-off finds what makes it spark beyond Reedus and McBride’s chemistry.