The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – Coming Home

By: Kelly Kearney

The divide between promises kept and “family is who we find along the way” seems to be a theme of this first season of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. After promising Carol on that phone call last week that he would be home soon, Daryl seems torn between the family who waits for him and the boy who needed a father figure to prepare him for the world he was fated to save. In the season finale, “Coming Home,” that divide in Daryl’s heart grows wider as he fights back Genet’s attacks to get Laurent safely to The Nest. Besides the surprising cameo in the final minutes that sets up season two, this six-part series has managed to breathe new life into the long running franchise that at times felt a bit like its name–The Walking Dead. This French adventure has been a visual delight while never getting too lost in the scenery to lean away from Daryl Dixon and the darker sides of what made this zombie universe such an addicting to watch.

LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE!

We open with a scene from D-Day and the brutal invasion of Normandy. Dead American soldiers cover the beaches, and as the camera focuses on one fallen man we cut to Daryl (Norman Reedus) standing in some makeshift gladiator fight-pit surrounded by Genet’s followers. The entertainment tonight is going to be a fight to the death between the American and a juiced up super variant Walker. As the crowd goes wild with the applause, Codron (Romain Levi) yells down to the ring “Dixon! Today you die for my brother!” Someone didn’t give him the message that throughout the series Daryl keeps repeating the same mantra, he is not dying in France. This man has places to go and people waiting for him and this little detour isn’t going to be his last hurrah. Armed with a medieval ax, he takes on the super fast and harder-to-kill Walker with ease. He winds up pinning the thing to a wall with the pointy end of his weapon and when the blood drips out it burns the leather gloves he is wearing. Up in the crowd above, Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) starts praying with Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) for God to protect Daryl, but the savior- child has a direct line to the big guy upstairs and he assures his aunt he will win this fight. It’s touch and go for a while, but when the Walker comes sprinting towards him, Daryl grabs a flag from the wall and impales the zombie in what is probably the first death by nationalism we’ve seen in the series. Genet (Anne Charrier) doesn’t seem too pleased with the outcome of this fight so she adds some drama to the mix. In comes Quinn (Adam Nagaitis), who gets chained to Daryl, and the two are forced into a tag-team match against four walkers attacking them from all sides. The two men make a decent fighting pair– with Daryl doing the bulk of the killings but Quinn putting up a good fight too. In the end, the two manage to take out all the walkers and the crowd goes wild chanting “Dixon! Dixon!” They decapitated their final opponent, so Daryl shows Genet what he thinks of her and her fascist regime by tossing the chomping head of the walker up into her seat. She isn’t amused, and even less impressed with her lead scientist (François Delaive) who probably promised her his super variants can’t be beaten. Considering one’s head exploded before it even entered the ring, the look she shoots him is probably as deadly as his creations. Instead of winning some prize–like his freedom, Genet orders her soldiers to open fire on Daryl and Quinn but before the men can pull the trigger, Fallou (Eriq Ebouaney) and his fellow Union of Hope friends, manage to sneak into the fight with weapons of their own. From within the crowd, they open fire on the guards taking them down and giving Daryl and Quinn a chance to escape. The two men are still chained together as they take off through the bowels of Genet’s lair. Speaking of the angry leader, she demands to know how these people got inside her space. She blames one of her Commanders for the infiltration and then tells him to take Codron to find Daryl. He is motivated by vengeance, so if anyone can bring the American back to her- dead or alive, it’s him. Meanwhile, she orders Isabelle and Laurent to be locked in a cell. As she ushers the two behind the bars she looks the boy in the eye and chuckles out, “The Messiah? I don’t think so.”

Taking One for the Team

If this kid does have Heavenly powers he might want to use them on the two men he thinks of as his fathers. Hiding from Genet’s men, Daryl notices a wound on Quinn’s shoulder which he casually shrugs off as a burn from the blood of one of the walkers. He says he didn’t even feel it but Daryl knows better– It doesn’t look like a burn and that means Quinn is probably running out of time. Down in the cell, Laurent is questioning his faith after Genet mocks them with “God is not coming for you.” Isabelle restores his faith when she pulls out of her pocket the stolen key she swiped from one of the guards when Laurent struggled to get in the cell. She was a skillful pickpocket in her former life and some talents never fade. Now they are free to go find bio-Daddy and stand- in Daddy who could probably use the help considering all of Genet’s people are after them.

Speaking of, the two men are still chained together and Daryl searches for a way to free them.. Quinn is looking worse by the minute and he must know he is dying because he starts talking about his regret for how he treated Isabelle. It seems he cares about the woman even if using their son to get her back was the wrong way to show it. Now that apology is a little too late to give. Daryl says that if he wants to do something to protect Isabelle and their son, he could give him a running start with this mob that’s searching for them. Quinn knows he won’t survive anyway so he agrees to let Daryl cut the chains connecting by chopping off his hand at the wrist. He uses his belt as a tourniquet, but before Daryl can free them he asks him to tell Isabelle he did this for her. “You got it,” Daryl says as he swings the ax, and with one hard chop, the two men are free. Quinn’s screams alert the soldiers to where they’re hiding and it leaves the injured man no other choice but to distract them away from a fleeing Daryl.

How a Boy Becomes a Man

As Isabelle and Laurent two make their way down a staircase to their freedom, they both can hear Quinn screaming from above. They eventually make their way to the bottom floor and near the exit just as Daryl runs into Fallou and tells him to start up the Jeep, he is going back inside to find the Nun and kid. He finds them quickly but they’re separated by a locked gate. That’s when the quickest turning in The Walking Dead history comes stumbling in. A dead and hungry Quinn pins Isabelle to a wall and for some reason, this strong woman can’t fight him off. Daryl hands Laurent his ax through the gate and starts screaming at him to save Isabelle. The problem is, Laurent took some vow to not kill the dead, and it doesn’t help that this zombie is also his father. He has an internal debate about what he should do until Daryl screams, “Save her! Do it! God will forgive you!” That is enough of a push for Laurent to take the ax and strike down his father. Daryl seems to be the strength and guidance this boy needed to become a man, and that’s exactly what Isabelle had hoped for when the American limped his way into her Abbey.

On the Road Again

Now free from Genet’s compound, Sylvie (Laïka Blanc-Francard) says a tearful goodbye to her love Emile (Tristan Zanchi), who says he and Fallou “must go where we are needed.” He does hope to see her again if/when she joins him in his community. Daryl along with the two women and Laurent, get in the Jeep and finish their journey to The Nest. The easy road North is a sigh of relief until a heartbroken Sylvie asks Daryl if he has ever been in love. It’s a question that continues to swirl around this character because his heart is torn between home and the friends he has made in France. He almost chokes on the question and doesn’t answer her because love is a complicated thing for Daryl. It isn’t that he is incapable- he feels it, he told Carol he loved her in the final moments of The Walking Dead, but his version of love goes deeper than most and it’s full of fear of loss and an abundance of pain. It’s not an easy answer and Slyvie can tell. Answers come a bit easier to Laurent, who is in the backseat telling Isabelle how he learned that sometimes people have to do horrible things but God will forgive them. He means killing zombie Quinn– who he admits was never really a father to him anyway. The soft and sheltered boy Daryl met at the Abbey is maturing into the open-minded leader his aunt knew he could be.

While driving down the road they experience some car trouble, forcing Daryl to pull over and get under the hood to take a look. The break gives Isabelle time to get to know him and the conversation takes a turn down the Dixon family history. She’s impressed with how handy he is and says her father could never teach her how to change a tire. Daryl must think that’s so quaint since his father made him and his brother take engines apart and if they couldn’t properly put them back together, they didn’t eat. Daryl’s abusive past is a big part of his backstory and he doesn’t often share the details with people he isn’t close to. He goes a bit further into his past and talks about his grandfather dying in France during the invasion of Normandy and how that loss trickled down through the generations with pain manifesting into abuse. This is why he is determined to break that cycle and get back home. He made promises to people he loves and he knows what it feels like when those promises are broken. His grandfather died in a foreign land for someone else’s cause, and he isn’t ready to join him–and we can assume, take another parental figure away from Judith. He has been gone long enough that she might never trust another person or promise again–not that Daryl expresses that to her. Outside of that brief conversation with Laurent about his friends, he doesn’t talk much about home with Isabelle. We also find out in this chat that she lied– again, but this time it was about that picture she said Laurent drew predicting his arrival. She told the boy to draw it so she could convince him to stay. Surprisingly, Daryl shrugs that truth off and then tells her Quinn thought of her before he died and he thought she should know. He crawls under the car and the conversation takes a strange pause because Codron grabs Isabelle! When Daryl crawls out from under the car to check on her, Codron knocks him down with a wrench. Codron and his men have the upperhand so a scared Daryl begs them to take him instead and leave everyone else alone. He is fueled by vengeance as Codron raises his gun and that’s when Laurent looks him in the eye and says, “God loves you.” Something comes over the man and instead of killing his enemies he turns the gun on his soldiers and shoots them down. Shaking, Daryl holds his hand up thinking they’re next but Codron really had a change of heart. “Not today, Dixon,” he says, he has bigger plans after he spots Aslan’s watch on the ground. Isabelle dropped it when she fell and Codron immediately recognized the historic Mont Saint-Michel on the watch face. He puts the clues together and realizes it’s probably The Nest. His plans change and he heads to The Nest but before he walks away he tells them to burn the truck to cover their tracks.

The Nest

It’s a day’s walk to Mont Saint-Michel and when they finally arrive the welcoming is warm and celebratory. They have been waiting for Laurent and they greet him like l and the hero they believe he is. They also whisk the injured Isabelle to their infirmary and promise she is in good hands with their doctors. The Nest is not only safe– it’s a thriving community, and all the worries Daryl had about Laurent’s safety seem to go out with the tides surrounding the boy’s new home. For now, anyway; there is still the threat of Genet finding them, but this community is large and their leader–Losang (Joel de le Fuente) from Hoboken, insists they can handle her. Daryl and Losang have America in common and that might be why Daryl hears the man out when he tries convincing him to stay. He does stick around long enough for Isabelle to recover, and in the meantime, he teaches people how to shoot guns and watches Laurent finally get to be a child with other kids his age. He is fitting in at this community which is only going to make it harder when it’s time to say goodbye. Making it even more confusing is the responsibility he feels for Isabelle and Laurent. Throughout this adventure they’ve turned into a little makeshift family and anyone familiar with Daryl Dixon knows the way to his heart is through children. He smiles as he watches Isabelle and Laurent hug; they seem peaceful now, and so does he if it weren’t for the family back home waiting for him, he would have no problem making room in his heart for these new friends. We can tell he’s torn between where he belongs and it might be the first time he has felt that way. Eventually, he chooses and when Isabelle finds him packing his bags the two argue about him leaving. She tries to use Laurent to guilt him into staying but once again they’ve never really had a conversation about what he would have to sacrifice if he did. His mind Is made up, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. We see the look of regret on his face when he places Laurent’s Rubik’s Cube next to him while he sleeps. He is convinced this sort of goodbye is what’s best, and as he heads towards the beaches of Normandy he gets a sign that maybe he has made the right choice. In the distance he sees a tattered American flag waving in the wind above the graves of the American soldiers who died on the beach. He searches through the white crosses until he finds a headstone with his name on it and he can barely hold back his tears. It feels like the Dixon family story has come full-circle, and as he spots the ship off in the distance he starts waving his hands letting them know he’s ready to go. Just as he starts to make his way to the water’s edge, the dead rise-up to attack! One by one he knocks them down with his swinging mace and when the threat is manageable that’s when he hears a small voice yelling for him on the cliff above the beach. It’s Laurent, and he’s calling for Daryl to come back. Now he really has a choice to make: he can get on the boat, or he can go back to The Nest and try to find that happiness that everyone keeps talking about. We don’t see what his decision is, but we can assume he at least paused his return home because what happens next sets up the next season and it is going to be epic!.

The Return of Carol

We’re back in America where we see an old muscle car speeding after a man (Paul Zies) riding what looks like Daryl Dixon’s motorcycle. The car catches up to him so he hits the brakes and pulls out a gun demanding the driver get out of the car. She does and it’s Carol (Melissa McBride) doing her best impression of some harmless woman. She is known for choosing the least threatening mask to wear before she goes beast-mode and this time is no different. When the guy gets distracted she knocks him out with a wrench and tosses him in the trunk of her car. When he comes to, she has a gun trained on his head demanding to know where he got the bike. By now this guy knows that the woman he’s dealing with is not messing around, so he comes clean and tells her where he found the bike and it looks like she is heading to Maine and that repair shop! Just as she’s about to shut the trunk on him she promises she’ll come back if he’s telling the truth. That’s when we see her hop on Daryl’s bike and speed off towards the last place her best friend was seen. Daryl never came home after he promised he would during that phone call, so every single person between New England and Paris better watch out because when this woman can’t find her bestie, she racks up a body count worthy of five men. Carol is coming for Daryl, so let’s hope he has a good excuse for why he broke his promise because his soulmate isn’t crossing oceans just to say hi. She is on a mission, and maybe it has to do with that name that dropped off the call when she said someone came home to The Commonwealth. Pack your bags, DIxon, you are needed in Virginia!