THE WALKING DEAD: DARYL DIXON Showrunner on the Future of the Franchise, Which Could Reunite Old Friends
Season 2 of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon wrapped up this past weekend, and it gave fans a future with Daryl and Carol to look forward to as they travel down a new road.
It was awesome to see them reunite, and we aren’t done with them yet. After a tense finale, they are looking to head to another European city, although knowing where they’re filming Season 3, it sounds like they are facing a detour.
So what’s ahead for the pair? Showrunner and Executive producer David Zabel talked about the season’s end, as well as the future of the show, telling The Hollywood Reporter:
“We loved the reinvigoration we experienced going to France, and we wanted to continue doing that. On a story level, the characters should not settle down. It should be a road show.
“They have to keep moving [to return home]. At the end of season two, they’re going somewhere. We don’t know exactly where, and it’s not a direct line to the next place they go. But the idea is to keep the characters struggling and striving to get home and moving.”
He continued: “On another level, we get to bring in a whole other culture and history and flavor and color and light and architecture. That’s going to be so exciting for reinventing the show.
“It felt like all signs pointed toward us continuing to move and get to the next place. In seasons five and six, it could be a different place. They’ll keep moving until they get home!”
Another country beyond Spain? What’s next on Daryl and Carol’s sight-seeing survival tour, a trip to Italy? Zabel said:
“I can’t tell you, but I do have a plan. I’ve talked to Norman about it. There is a very cool plan. But we don’t even know if we’re making season four yet…”
What’s more, future plans surrounding Daryl and Carol could come down to a wildcard factor out of the Daryl Dixon team’s hands, the whims of the greater Walking Dead franchise. Zabel explained:
“I’ve had pretty free rein. I talk to [franchise chief creative officer Scott M. Gimple] all the time and he’s said, ‘You have free rein, at least for now. Keep doing what you’re doing.’
“But at some point, I imagine some things might be determined by what other characters are doing and where they are. So, I don’t know if Negan’s [Jeffrey Dean Morgan] going to get on a raft on the Hudson and wind up [in Europe].”
Could that mean we could maybe even see Rick (Andrew Lincoln) return to reunite with Daryl?? That would be epic!
Whatever the future holds, as long as The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon continues on, it’ll hinge on Daryl and Carol’s relationship moving forward. Zabel says:
“There’s so much they haven’t seen and experienced. They’re both characters who are [landlocked Americans], and in that way, they are these classic Americans in some sense who never got to travel the world.
“They both had reasons to stay close to home. That was part of what I thought was exciting from the beginning — taking those characters and exposing them to these things they maybe saw in a book once, or maybe saw a picture of, and now they’re in the middle of it.
He continues: “From the audience’s point of view, it’s a chance to see what the apocalypse looks like in these other parts of the world, and so the audience hopefully gets to experience the same thing as these characters.
“It’s like, ‘Wow, I’ve only seen the Eiffel Tower in pictures, and now I’m standing next to it… and also, there are walkers standing next to it, too.'”
It’s been very cool to see the series live on in a new country with these characters we have known and loved since the beginning. You can catch up on the first two seasons of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon on AMC+.