The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon swiftly returned for season two, after only a short year-long intermission after the well-received first season. The second season features a bit of an expansion, as it adds longtime TWD alum Melissa McBride, returning to the role of Carol Peletier. Other returning cast includes Norman Reedus, Clemence Poesy, Louis Puech Scigliuzzi, Anne Charrier, Eriq Ebouaney, Laika Blanc-Francard, and more. The newest installment also includes a slight change to the title of the series, as it is now known as The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol.
Season one of the TWD spinoff series left off with the group, led by Daryl Dixon, arriving at The Nest, a beach fortress meant to be a safe haven for survivors in France. The Nest is located in the beautiful commune known as Mont-Saint-Michel. Daryl debates leaving to return home or to stay and protect Laurent, while we get a surprise glimpse at Carol searching for Daryl, setting up her return in season two. With the stage already set for a larger second season, here are some thoughts on how the season ends up playing out.
Daryl Dixon continues his journey to protect Laurent in France in The Book of Carol
Season two picks up immediately where season one left off, with Daryl saving Laurent from a horde of the undead on the beach outside of Mont-Saint-Michel. The story of Daryl, Isabelle, and Laurent in season one is some of the most pleasantly surprising material we’ve received from any of The Walking Dead series in quite some time.
The second season thankfully continues to build on that dynamic and further the bonds and relationships that surround the protection of Laurent. Most of all, we continue to see Daryl Dixon become a fully fleshed out character with a range of nuanced emotions that were never substantially presented in the original flagship series.
Given just how spoiler-filled the entire second season is, it is a bit difficult to talk about specific plot points regarding each character without giving too much away. What can be said is that each character that revolves around Daryl, including Isabelle, Laurent, Losang, and even the antagonist Madame Genet, continue to receive ample character development. While the writing in the first half of the season remains strong, the season also moves at a much swifter pace than season one.
The plot at The Nest continues to revolve around Laurent and the profound belief in his specialness. The first season clearly establishes that almost everyone at The Nest believes Laurent is special and has special abilities that can lead mankind into the future. What can be said is the level of belief this season certainly reaches new levels of religious extremism, and that isn’t something Daryl Dixon is overly fond of, to say the least.
Carol Peletier returns once again in the latest The Walking Dead spinoff
It’s always a pleasure to see Melissa McBride’s performance as Carol on screen in a The Walking Dead show. While the flagship series ended only two years ago, The Walking Dead ran from 2010-2022 and never missed a year during that time, and the dedicated audience grew close to these beloved characters.
Carol Peletier’s return and the writing for her character was quite substantial this season. Given that the season runs for only six episodes, compared to the flagship series’ sixteen episode seasons, the amount of substance that can be delivered in only six episodes certainly feels squeezed at times.
As seen in the trailers, a big portion of Carol’s season revolves around her friendship with her newly found friend Ash (Manish Dayal). Carol and Ash spend most of the trailer discussing flying across the Atlantic Ocean, with even a glimpse at Carol and Ash getting out of this plane. How Carol ends up convincing Ash to bring her across the ocean is writing that may come off as controversial to some, as it’ll be debatable if the choices she makes are consistent with the longtime characterization of Carol Peletier.
What we see beyond the arc of Carol and Ash flying in the plane obviously gets into major spoiler territory. The season does a great job at recognizing that, more than ever, this is Carol’s show as much as it is Daryl’s show, for better or for worse. Through that realization, the show is able to dive deep into the mind of Carol and touch on some of her past traumas in incredibly touching ways through symbols of trauma. I, overall, appreciated how much depth Carol was given throughout certain portions of this season.
Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol has some major issues with the direction of the narrative
The insertion of Carol into an already established plot, to me, presents some issues around the future of this show. It feels as though inserting Carol into this show means sidelining a lot of already established and developed characters. While Melissa McBride’s Carol Peletier is a beloved character and her pre established dynamic with Daryl Dixon is likely to bring back some longtime fans to the show, in doing so, this meant the show likely had to sacrifice a good portion of the already developed substance and dynamics to do so.
Without getting into any spoilers, I was not a huge fan of how the second half of this season ends up panning out. It’ll be interesting to see how general audiences respond to the second half of the season as well, as there isn’t a strong enough grip yet on how the audience feels about some of the established characters from season one. Overall, the presumed season three of this show is shaping up to be incredibly different than the first two.
While The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol ultimately wound up being a mixed bag, the series still features writing of substance and continued character development. The writing for this series continues to be some of the best work in a The Walking Dead series, though. It manages to continue to flesh out Daryl Dixon as a character and introduce some themes that never really made it into the flagship series, as during that time the show was focused on following the comic book storyline. Overall, while season two continues to benefit from the writing that made the first season a hit, it will be interesting to see where season three of this series heads.
Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol airs on AMC & AMC+ beginning September 29th. Are you excited about this The Walking Dead story continuing? Let us know on social media @mycosmiccircus.
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