The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – Deux Amours

By starrymag | October 15, 2023

By: Kelly Kearney

 

 

After Genet shut down all the exits out of Paris to capture the American and Laurent, Isabelle stays in the capitol with Quinn and sends Daryl and her nephew by boat up North. Traveling with them from the Nest is Azlan– a kind man who is willing to dedicate his life to the safety of the savior of humankind. Things take a turn when a scorned woman points Genet in the direction of the travelers causing one death and one epic meltdown from Daryl. “Deux Amours,” is about one heart and two promises with one goal: to get back home.

 

Is Laurent Ready to Face the World?

 

After fleeing Paris by boat, Daryl (Norman Reedus) expresses his worry to Azlan (Hassam Ghancy)–a Nest resident and member of the Union of Hope, about the hard truths of this world and how the soft Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) might not be ready for what awaits him at The Nest. He watches as Laurent, in his ear-flapped hat soaking up the canal views from the deck of the boat, seems to be having the time of his life on the water. Daryl’s concern is valid–the pint-sized savior has no real-world experience, unlike Judith Grimes–a little ass-kicker of a warrior who can hold her own. Daryl wonders if the nuns taught Laurent any survival skills beyond prayer and hopes The Nest can keep the boy safe. Azlan assures Daryl The Nest is safe, and then questions why he would leave the boy at all. He again tries to float the same idea Isabelle did earlier, that home is found with the people who need you now, but Daryl is focused on his family and those people always need him. He tells Azlan that the Union of Hope’s mission isn’t his fight, and dying for someone else’s cause unleashes trauma onto family members of the dead. He knows this well since he was raised in a house reeling from grief and taking out their pain on him and his brother. He doesn’t want thar for his niece and nephew, Judth and R.J. Grimes, or his bestie Carol–to whom he promised he would return to after he set out to find more survivors.

 In a flashback we see how Daryl got turned around on his way back to the Commonwealth and it all started when his bike ran out of gas. Walking his bike down a road in Maine, a man named Jones (Gilbert Glenn Brown) stops him to offer his help. He could see that Daryl was handy with a motorcycle–something his community could use, and offered to gas up the bike if he followed him back to his repair shop. There, we see a group of blue collar mechanic- types listening to French radio and we can assume, not really understanding what it’s saying. Daryl takes a survey of the people he’s dealing with and notices a guy named Juno (John Ales) bullying a kid named T.J. (Martin Martinez) over a photo of his girlfriend he is missing back home. Daryl can understand how T.J. feels; home is on his mind too. Gathering the men around him, Jones lays down some ground rules and Daryl tries to take it all in and figure out what these men are up to. No fighting, no stealing, no sexual deviancy of any kind is allowed, according to Jones, and. “No children will be accepted, nor elderly or shorties. Five foot, four inches is the cut-off,” he explains. The cut off for what? We get a clue when Juno asks what they want “them” for and a very familiar French doctor (François Delaive) steps forward to say it’s not their concern. This is the same doctor working for Genet on the French cargo ship we know Daryl escaped from before washing up in France. The only thing these men are told is that they will be paid in pints of ethanol for every head they bring to the doctor. Juno is outraged because they were promised a quart per head, but the doctor says that was only for the fresh ones. These guys are collecting walkers for Genet’s experiments and from the sounds of it, dead or alive, this business is thriving. T.J. is smart and thinks they can pull in more walkers if they hunt in groups, but none of the older guys at the shop seem to want anything to do with him. Daryl always gravitates towards loaners, so after he manages to drag back a group of walkers and notices T.J. didn’t find one, he tells the kid to go home to his girl, but he can’t without the gas to get there. He asks if Daryl could use some help and they could split the gas but he doesn’t need the help, he hunts down more walkers than anyone else.

 

Water Lilies and Memories of Home

 

Back to the present and Azlan docks the boat by tying it to a tree so the three travelers can camp for the night. The spot is surrounded by cans so they can hear if any les affamès (hungry ones) wander into the camp. With the boat secure, Azlan–a devout Muslim, goes to do his afternoon prayers while Daryl teaches Laurent how to gut a fish. The kid is a vegetarian and made an oath to God to never eat one of his creatures but Daryl and Azlan assure him that God would understand. The fish isn’t the only thing getting Laurent down, he also misses his aunt Isabelle and wonders when he will see her again. Daryl tries to make him feel better by saying everyone is missing someone and whenLaurent asks who he is missing, he mentions his friends back home, Connie and Ezekiel, the two kids,  RJ and Judith, and “a lady named Carol.” Laurent says they sound nice and soothes his own worries by saying they’ll be with Isabelle soon.

Speaking of the nun who stayed behind in Paris to ensure Laurent had safe passage out of the capitol, we see Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) wake in a lavishly decorated room next to that water lilies painting that caught Daryl’s eye. She–much like that painting would’ve been before the fall, is heavily under guard at Quinn’s (Adam Nagaitis) mansion. To say that wealth is a worthless conquest in the apocalypse would be an understatement, but Quinn seems to relish in the fact he lives like a King and wants Isabelle to be his willing Queen. The problem Quinn doesn’t see forming is that his girlfriend, Anna (Lukerya Ilyashenko), who is being turned away from the mansion now that she has been replaced by Isabelle, isn’t about to take this break-up lightly, So, when Quinn tells Isabelle he heard Daryl and Laurent escaped the city and are heading North, we can only assume Anna will play a role in how safe they stay. Isabelle pretends to be grateful but secretly she is gripping a shiv and praying to God to forgive her for what she might do.

Outside of Paris, Daryl asks Azlan if the only boat back to America runs out of Le Havre. That port is under Genet’s control but he promises Daryl his leader–a buddhist monk called Losang, can secure him passage on a friendlier boat. While this conversation is going on, the two men overhear Laurent praying for his American friends as well as the strength to be more like Daryl.

Strength is something Daryl inspires in T.J too. In a flashback, we see him teach the young man how to chop wood to get in good with the bullies at the repair shop. They offered to let him hunt with them if he can keep the fire going that night. He tells Daryl he promised his girlfriend he would come home and he will do whatever it takes to keep that promise. He is California-bound, claiming he heard it’s safer there, but Debbie Downer Daryl knows that’s not true; it’s all gone to the dead, from east to west and everything in between.

 

Two Promises and a Divided Heart

 

At the mansion, Quinn is promising Isabelle he can be a better man than he was when they were first separated by tempting him with a religious comparison between himself and Abraham who found redemption after attempting to murder his son Isaac in honor of his God. Quinn believes in redemption and knows Isabelle the nun must too. Whether he is manipulating her doesn’t matter because Isabelle plays along and even seduces him white she secretly grips a shiv. She has the perfect opportunity to kill him but she doesn’t take it; a choice she might later regret.

Back at the camp, Daryl thinks about Maine and when he radioed Carol (Melissa McBride) to say he promised henwould be back so she should expect him home in a week. The connection was interrupted by static but through his excitement to talk to her he can tell something is wrong. He asks Carol about it but she reminds him that he doesn’t need to worry about her–not that he will ever listen, worrying about Carol is one of his favorite hobbies. Leading The Commonwealth has been an adjustment and she mostly blames the work on why she sounds a bit strained. Then she says someone came back home but Daryl can’t make out the name. He asks her to repeat it but the connection is lost. Could it be Rick or Michonne? Time will tell, but for now, he is focused on one thing: gas up the bike so he keeps his promise to Carol and gets home.

Daryl’s flashback snaps back to the present where he and Laurent are awakened by the sound of rattling cans. There is a walker in the camp and after Daryl deals with it he finds Azlan impaled on a telephone pole. The man is still alive–barely, and can’t help but laugh at the ridiculous way he is going to die. His father worked for the telephone company so obviously God has one deadly sense of humor. He uses his final breaths to hand Dary the watch with a drawing of the Nest on the face. He tells him to follow the river North and keep Laurent safe. He asks Daryl to finish him off and as he looks to the east he tells “Monsieur Dixon” he is at peace. “Truly to him we return” he says, and in the morning we see Daryl burying his body and Laurent placing prayer beads on Azlan’s grave.

 

You are Grounded!

 

Daryl panics because the boat is gone! Azlan tied it to the tree, so where did it go? Laurent is where it went. He untied it and now they are stuck without a way to The Nest. Daryl is livid and starts screaming that he should have left Laurent behind. He berates him with insults calling him worthless and “a stupid little s**t,” as he shakes the boy and asks him why. Detours, fights, pigeons,  and bossy nuns, Daryl has had enough. He wants to go home and this kid just set those plans back even further. A traumatized Laurent–who has probably never been reprimanded for anything is his perfect little life, says he let the boat go because he is scared of losing anyone else. He lost his mother, his aunt, the abbey he grew up in, and when he gets to The Nest, he will lose Daryl too. Daryl’s anger fizzles when he realizes this kid has had a lot of loss in a short amount of time. He apologizes for snapping at him and hugs Laurent hoping it makes up for what he said. It seems to work because it’s not long before the two are back on the road and talking about back home in America. Laurent wants to go with Daryl, but Isabelle will be looking for her nephew at The Nest. He made a promise to the nun–like the promise he made Carol, and now we know why this episode is called “Deux Amours.” Daryl’s heart is torn between the love he has for this kid and the love he has for Carol and his family back home and those two things can never exist in the same place. Their conversation is cut short when the sound of trucks carrying Genet’s soldiers forces them to take cover in the woods. He hands Laurent his knife and Azlan’s watch and tells the boy to follow the river north. Daryl comes out of hiding to distract the soldiers away from the fleeing Laurent and is thrown to the ground as Genet’s goons demand to know where the boy is. That’s when we jump back in time to another young man Daryl couldn’t save–T.J…

Juno, the surly bully at the repair shop, returns from the hunt with a pack of captured walkers and one of them is poor T.J.! The rope burns on the young man’s wrists clue Daryl in on what Juno did, but the man shrugs it off with “A quart’s a quart–you prick.” For that, Daryl throws a punch and a fight breaks out– sparking Jones to remind them both of the rules. He ends up tossing the brawlers out of the camp and that is when we head back to the present where Daryl is playing dumb with Genet’s soldiers. He acts clueless about the boy they’re looking for, but they already found Laurent’s things– books and a Rubix cube the boy dropped when they ran to hide Just as he is about to pay for his lies with his life, Laurent surrenders! Genet wins…for now.

Speaking of Madame Genet, she invites Quinn and Isabelle to a party to celebrate Charles De Gaulle and France’s freedom day. That means the nun needs something to wear. Quinn gives her an amazing necklace worth millions in the old world,and she begrudgingly accepts it with a smile and gets ready for the event. When the two arrive by car later that day, Isabelle spots Sylvie( Laïka Blanc-Francard), Fallou (Eriq Ebouaney), and Emile (Tristan Zanch1), walking with a crowd of people outside. Inside, the party is no Met Gala, worthy of that necklace around the nun’s throat. Skipping past any glitz and glamor, the two are taken down to the dark and dank dungeon where they can hear men being tortured. That’s when they see Genet (Anne Charrier)–with a cat who caught the canary grin on her face and a plan Quinn never saw coming. Not only does she have Daryl in a cell, but she also has Laurent, and it is all thanks to the smiling Anna, who was happy to get her broken-hearted revenge. Daryl apologizes to Isabelle for failing to keep Laurent safe while Quinn equally fails to convince Genet he had nothing to do with helping the American escape. His excuses fall in deaf ears and she tosses Quinn into a cell alongside Daryl. With the men locked up, she takes Isabelle to Laurent and tells them both she has an idea to unite France. It’s a PR clean-up to gain support from the Union. She thinks one public appearance and good word about her from their Messiah should get the people to trust her and her leadership. As much as she is hoping this sounds like a reasonable request, Isabelle knows this is not an ask but an order.

Down in his cell Quinn blames Daryl for not keeping Laurent safe, and that sends Daryl into time jump back to the last time he was shoved in one of Genet’s cages. Both Daryl and Juno wound up as fresh meat in one of the doctor’s experiments. They were loaded on a ship full of prisoners–some alive, plenty dead, just waiting to be test subjects in this demented Frankenstein game. As Juno yells for the guards to tell them where the boat is heading, Daryl sees one man removed from a cell and tossed into a pit with the hungry dead. In the present, when a guard handcuffs him to escort him out of his cell we hear Genet giving a speech to her people thanking them for traveling to celebrate their “rebirth; the rise of the sixth republic!” Flipping between timelines, Daryl is tossed in a gladiator ring as the present party’s entertainment, while in the past he manages to kill the guards, free Juno and the others, and escape from the ship on a lifeboat before the super variants can break free. No such luck for Juno, who misses the boat when one of them rips him to shreds. Now Daryl is face to face with one of Genet’s monsters, who gets juiced up on some drug that the doctor whipped up. Twice the speed and strength it seems nothing kills these hungries and as Daryl faces what could be his last moments in this life. Genet’s voice bellows over the cheering crowd. She is creating a new France–one that’s stronger than ever, and if it is anything like these hybrid killers, her people need Laurent more than they know.