The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon is finally back for Season 2. And while the Season 2 premiere brought on some of Daryl Dixon’s (Norman Reedus) fancy French adventures, the focus was mostly on the big return of Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride). And in the process, we saw Carol do one of the most messed up things she’s done in TWD history.
Spoilers for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2, Episode 1 “The Book of Carol: La gentillesse des étrangers” past this point.
Picking up off the cliffhanger from Season 1, Carol is trying to track down Daryl. Pretty quickly, she finds some guys who work on cars. She shoots ’em with a few arrows. And discovers that Daryl’s been taken on a boat to France. Easy, right? Except for the whole “getting to France” part.
After crashing her (stolen) car thanks to a walker, she tracks down an airplane she’s seen flying over the area. There, she meets a man named Ash (Manish Dayal). Ash is the owner of the plane and takes flight once a day to just sort of get away from it all… Though as it turns out later in the episode, it’s a tribute to his dead son, who was obsessed with planes.
Carol, of course, wants to use that plane to get to France. And the way she does it is enormously upsetting for any long-time fan of the series. The reason? She tells Ash that her daughter Sophia and husband Ed went on vacation to France right before the zombie outbreak. She’s hoping to track them down on the slim hope they’re alive. This ultimately convinces Ash to help her, and they have several conversations about what Sophia might be like now.
Sophia (Madison Lintz), of course, is dead… Something we’re helpfully reminded of when Carol has a traumatic flashback to The Walking Dead‘s Season 2 midseason finale, “Pretty Much Dead Already.” There, a turned Sophia stumbled out of a barn and Carol ran towards her to hold her daughter, and probably die. She was only stopped by Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) shooting Sophia in the head.
That’s not even to mention Ed (Adam Minarovich), Carol’s abusive husband, who died earlier in Season 2 of TWD.
Look, Carol is a character who has been built up for well over a decade as willing to do whatever it takes for her friends. Here, she’s trying to get Daryl back home so her actions do logically follow. She’s also done some awful things in the past, usually in the service of the greater good. But Carol’s lie here to Ash preys on the feelings of a character who seems to be a nice guy who wants to be left alone mourning his son. She instead fabricates this fanciful story about her daughter being alive, and her kind husband, all to manipulate Ash into flying her thousands of miles on a potentially deadly and fruitless mission.
I’m not naive, mind you, I know how TV works. Chances are Carol’s lie will come out eventually. In the process, Ash will realize there is a bigger world out there. His son would have wanted him to live, not mourn for the rest of his life. You know the drill. But to have Carol besmirch the memory of Sophia, and paint Ed as some good father made my stomach twist and turn to watch. And her preying on a mourning father makes it only worse.
Is this the worst thing Carol has ever done? Maybe, maybe not. There are also five episodes to go in the season, and she’s not going to stop her search for Daryl now to come clean with Ash. But boy oh boy, it’s going to be hard to watch if she keeps this up.
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol Season 2 Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon premiere on Sundays on AMC and AMC+. The episodes premiere at 3 am ET / 12 am PT on AMC+, and 9 pm ET on AMC.
Here’s the full list of episodes in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2 with premiere dates:
- Sunday, September 29, 2024: The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, Season 2, Episode 1 – “The Book of Carol: La gentillesse des étrangers”
- Sunday, October 6, 2024: The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, Season 2, Episode 2 – “The Book of Carol: Moulin Rouge”
- Sunday, October 13, 2024: The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, Season 2, Episode 3 – “The Book of Carol: L’Invisible”
- Sunday, October 20, 2024: The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, Season 2, Episode 4 – “The Book of Carol: La Paradis Pour Toi”
- Sunday, October 27, 2024: The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, Season 2, Episode 5 – “The Book of Carol: Vouloir, C’est Pouvoir”
- Sunday, November 3, 2024: The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, Season 2, Episode 6 – “The Book of Carol: Au Revoir Les Enfants” *Season Finale*
