The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – La Gentillesse des Étrangers

By starrymag | October 6, 2024

By: Kelly Kearney

 

 

 

 

Whether you view their relationship as one of best friends or something more romantic, one thing is clear: Daryl and Carol are soulmates, and the longer they’re apart, the more chaos ensues for those around them. For the two, home isn’t a place; it’s each other, and that truth holds no matter what country they’re in. So, after Daryl failed to keep his “see you soon” promise, Carol takes it upon herself to find her missing best friend, aided by a man she discovers she has much in common with. Unbeknownst to her, the trouble keeping Daryl from home has led him all the way to France, a journey that seems nearly impossible in the apocalypse. Cue an amateur pilot and his small patched together plane. Carol has always been resourceful and she will pull out every trick in the book to chart a course to Europe; the question is, does her friend want to leave? That is an answer that will hang heavy on Daryl’s heart throughout the season, while Carol battles her own demons on a journey she never imagined she would take.

 

The Greater Good

 

We open on Daryl (Norman Reedus) at Mont Saint-Michel defining his role in Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) and Laurent’s (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) life. Has he forgotten about his family in the States, or is his heart divided between the people he left behind and the new relationships he is forming? It’s been roughly two weeks since he ditched his boat ride across the ocean to help an endangered Laurent during a walker attack. Now, the three of them are settling into a sort of family unit and The Nest seems like a good place to do it.

Besides being a father figure, Daryl has taken on the role of teacher in Laurent’s life, training him on how to handle walkers–a skill he needs to survive. However, Laurent may never be a good warrior, as he still clings to hope for the souls of the dead. It’s a belief that solidified after meeting the children from Ècole Matrernelle Simon Veil the previous season. This encounter, combined with his religious convictions, hinders his enthusiasm for killing walkers–he does it, he just doesn’t seem to have an excitement for it. Buddhist monk and leader of the Union of Hope Losang (Joel de la Fuente), agrees that Laurent is not cut out for violence—even against the dead—and encourages him to focus on books rather than weapons. “The greater good” sometimes means “resisting the urge to go on the offensive,” Losang explains. Daryl, being a “throw the first punch” kind of guy, finds himself at odds with Losang’s philosophy. He gently accuses The Union’s leader of underestimating the threat posed by Genet (Anne Charrier). This becomes all too clear when they learn that her Guerrier soldiers for Pouvoir Du Vivant, raided one of their camps, taking three people hostage—two of whom are Emile (Tristan Zanchi) and Fallou (Eriq Ebouaney), the men who helped Isabelle and Sylvie (Laïka Blanc-Francard) find safe passage out of Paris. They know Genet won’t stop until she finds Laurent, likely resorting to torture to extract that information from their captured friends. Rather than heeding Daryl’s advice to strike Genet first and rescue their friends before she learns of their whereabouts, Losang sends out a group of scouts to track her. Daryl, Sylvie, and Isabelle volunteer to go with the group, but before they leave, Losang offers Daryl a permanent place at The Nest. It’s an awkward exchange as Daryl still plans to make the trek back home. Losang proposes to find him a boat, making the journey easier—on the condition that he quits his fighting lessons with Laurent. He fears that Daryl’s darkness might interfere with the boy’s empathy. It’s an insulting request that just adds to the suspicion Daryl has for Losang’s leadership. Whether Daryl ends his mentorship with Laurent, stays in France, or goes home is a decision he’ll have to ponder after this scouting trip. He should have plenty of time since Losang has no idea when the next boat will arrive.

 

A Heart Divided

 

“I don’t know if this is the place I’m supposed to be,” Daryl later confides in Isabelle. Can he be happy in France with this special child and the nun making heart eyes at him? Something is slowly building between the two, and it is further confusing Daryl and dividing his heart. Isabelle admits she would be happy if he chose her and Laurent, but she knows it’s not so easy for Daryl to give up his family. What she doesn’t know is that in the past, his short time ex, Leah, asked the same and he couldn’t do it, so what makes Isabelle different?  “I keep thinking about the people I left behind. Wondering if they’re still thinking about me,” he ponders. Daryl has only been in France for less than a month, and forgetting two decades of his life, his best friend, and the children who rely on him for the people he just met doesn’t fit with the guy the people back home know. Of course, this is a new somewhat maturer Daryl who is facing some tough decisions knowing he can’t have his crepes and eat them too. He cares about Isabel and Laurent, and these relationships are just starting to bloom into something meaningful, so what does that mean for the best friend and soulmate he left behind in Ohio?

Finding Home

 

While Daryl weighs his past against his potential future at The Nest, Carol (Melissa McBride) answers his question about whether his people back home are thinking of him. Across the ocean in Freeport, Maine, she sets out to find him after not returning to the Commonwealth on the Friday he promised. We can assume his best friend waited a full 24-hours before starting to throw guys in trunks, demanding to know where he was. Welcome back, Carol. Your ability to turn men into terrified sniveling boys has been missing from this spin-off! Heaven help anyone who gets in the way of this bestie reunion.

After eventually finding his bike, thanks to a guy named Mick, whom she had to confront with a wrench to the skull in the season one finale, we see Carol zipping through the woods like a motorcycle pro. She is heading to the last known location Daryl was seen–a  junkyard camp Mick and his friends occupy. Pretending to be a friend of “Mick’s,” looking for help to fix his bike, she spots Daryl’s crossbow, and lies, playing the damsel in distress just long enough to gain the upper hand on the group. Something is off with these guys and before they can turn on her, Carol grabs the crossbow and takes down a few of the men. Rather than fighting this deadly woman, the men admit that Daryl was captured by a group and loaded onto a boat heading to France. When she makes her way to the beach, she is faced with piles of dead bodies and rusted out ships washed up on the sand. Did Daryl ever make it onto the ship? If he did, was it able to make it across the ocean? The worry is evident on Carol’s face but there is also a calmness to her that says she would know, in her soul, if her best friend was gone. She isn’t giving up until she has proof one way or the other.

 

Carol the Chameleon

 

After finding a car and furiously tossing out its self-help tapes for some good old rock and roll, Carol hears the sound of a small plane circling overhead. The distraction causes her to crash into a drive-in theater sign, giving her the perfect reason to track down that plane. On foot, she sneaks around until she spots the plane parked behind a fenced plot of land, equipped with plenty of security features to keep the dead and curious women like herself out. Doing what she does best, Carol plays the helpless victim trapped behind the gate, hoping the plane’s owner will drop their guard and let her in. “You seem like a really nice person, and I’d like to think we can still rely on the kindness of strangers,” she says.

The man, Ash (Manish Dayal), releases her from her confines, and we learn that his home security is run on a faulty generator that sometimes goes out—hence how Carol got trapped. It’s late, and she’s injured—though she’s playing it up to be worse than it is. Ash offers to patch up her wounds and gives her a spot in his barn to rest for the night. The barn triggers a memory for Carol—she immediately envisions Sophia walking out of another barn over a decade ago. Walker Sophia approaches, and Carol freezes, the echo of Rick’s gunshot ringing in her ears, snapping her back to the present with Ash.

Inside the barn, Carol spots the small plane and questions Ash about it. Despite the noise drawing local walkers to him, he flies that plane every day at the same time “just to get up above everything for a little while,” he explains.

The next day, Carol asks Ash to help her fix her car a few miles down the road. He agrees but heads up into the skies for his daily flight first. With some free time, Carol snoops around his property. She finds a locked greenhouse and makes her way inside, unaware that a power outage has left the front gates open, allowing walkers to enter. As the dead start to filter in, Carol is distracted by a child’s grave inside the greenhouse. She picks up a music box playing “You Are My Sunshine,” another painful reminder of her dead daughter. Just then, the walkers begin to swarm, catching Carol off guard. She narrowly escapes by braining a few with a garden trowel and climbing up a set of shelves to evade the dead on the greenhouse roof.

That’s when she spots Ash returning from his flight, livid over the destruction of what we learn is his son Avi Patel–A.P.’s grave. Any goodwill he had towards her evaporates, replaced by anger and regret for helping her. Carol attempts to apologize, hoping they can be friends. She admits that’s something she’s been missing but never explains why or her mission to find Daryl. After fixing the greenhouse and giving Ash some time to cool off, they discuss Avi. We learn he died at age seven, and Ash feels immense guilt for allowing his son to wander off. This is something Carol can relate to because she has been burdened with guilt over Sophia since she died. We also learn that A.P. loved planes, so in his honor, Ash restored a crashed Beechcraft and taught himself to fly.

Their discussion leads to Ash inviting Carol to dinner. Upon entering his home, she sees a flower arrangement made of Cherokee Roses—the same flowers Daryl gave her while searching for Sophia. Ash asks if she knows their meaning, and she does; she has been living it—a trail of tears for the children she lost along the way. That Cherokee Rose didn’t just bloom for Sophia; it planted the seed of a friendship that blossomed into a beautiful relationship based on love and respect.

Instead of using dinner to connect with Ash as two grieving parents, Carol manipulates his pain over Avi to persuade him to fly her to France. She claims she has a daughter, Sophia, who left for Europe with her husband Ed. When the world fell apart, she lost contact with them. Ash realizes her true intention—she wants him to fly her to France. Carol questions if he wouldn’t do the same for Avi if he knew the boy was out there. The truth is, Avi is dead, and Ash refuses to leave his home and son’s grave for a woman who lied her way into his life. The next day, Carol leaves in search of another way.

Eventually, Ash catches up to her, admitting he would do anything to find Avi, but that’s not the question troubling him. The real question is whether Carol would search for Avi if given the chance. She admits she would, if there were any hope in finding him alive. Ash considers her request but points out they would be blindly flying across the ocean without communication or any way of checking the weather. Unfortunately, this is Carol’s only option. When Ash questions why she’s looking for Sophia after all these years, she replies, “I couldn’t keep waiting, feeling stuck. I had to move forward; I had to try.” We can assume there’s some truth in that, but deep down, it’s about Daryl leaving her in the Commonwealth and her wish that she had gone with him.

After their back and forth, Ash agrees to fly to France and starts plotting their course, hugging the coast and landing in Greenland to minimize their time over open water. He gathers ethanol gas for the trip; he has dozens of barrels of homemade ethanol in the barn, and with just enough room on the plane for a few, they prepare to take off. When Ash asks how Carol plans to find Sophia, she admits she has an address for Ed’s aunt in Paris—a good place to start. With her mind set on Daryl rather than Sophia, she acknowledges there’s a chance this trip could end without finding either of them. But it’s the hope she clings to that keeps Ash willing to help.

 

Strike First, Peace Later

 

Meanwhile, in France, Mathis (Théo Costa-Marini) informs Losang that Genet is transporting their friends in a convoy of trucks. The Buddhist leader reminds Daryl of their peaceful ways before he leads a team to save Emile and Fallou. Later, in a small French village, Daryl and Mathis lay down trip wires to stop the convoy.

Back at The Nest, Jacinta (Nassima Benchicou)—second to Losang—tries to convince the leader to move up a mysterious ceremony that she claims Daryl and his friends wouldn’t agree to participate in. With an ominous glance at Laurent, who is playing chess with Sylvie, Losang expresses doubt about the boy’s readiness. Jacinta, frustrated, questions whether it’s Losang who isn’t ready, not the boy they claim to be the Messiah.

Back in Maine, Carol and Ash face a storm that knocks out the generator, once again opening the gates to the walkers. Running out of time, they scramble to prepare the plane for takeoff. As they race down the makeshift runway, the wings of the plane clotheslines a few of the dead and clear their path. Lightning strikes the generator, short-circuiting the electrical fence around the barn as sparks ignite the structure housing barrels of ethanol. Everything—including the walkers—goes up in a massive fiery explosion.

Simultaneously, as the fire engulfs the property and Carol and Ash get ready for takeoff to Greenland, Daryl’s tripwire in France hits Genet’s convoy, blowing up a truck, toppling several others, and causing chaos in the streets. Trucks crash into one another, some flipping on their sides, as gunfire erupts between Union fighters and the Pouvoir.

 

Two Hearts an Ocean Apart

 

Flipping back and forth between France and Maine, Carol and Ash ascend into the skies while Daryl rescues Fallou and Emile just as a bloodied Genet crawls out from one of the crashed vehicles. She takes one look at Daryl and laughs, saying, “I should have known. Angels always send their most vicious demon to do their dirty work.” Her words resonate with Daryl, reminding him of Losang’s doubts about his darkness and how it contrasts with the Union of Hope’s pacifism. If protecting his friends makes him a demon, so be it.

Daryl raises his rifle to shoot Genet just as an explosive device detonates in the street. In the smoke from the blast, Genet manages to escape. Daryl is left to return to Mont Saint-Michel with Fallou and Emile, fully aware that Genet’s survival poses an increasing threat to Laurent and The Nest.

In the skies over Maine, Ash senses Carol’s nerves; it’s her first time flying in a plane. He reassures her, promising, “There’s nothing to be afraid of up here.” As they climb high through the clouds, sunlight fills Carol’s face, igniting a sense of hope within her. She’s on her way to bringing Daryl home, but doubts linger—will Daryl want to come back? Will he be the same man she watched drive away on that bike?