During the initial outbreak, Isabelle, a drug addict and thief, escapes from Paris with her boyfriend Quinn and her pregnant sister Lily; she ultimately abandons Quinn. Lily dies and gives birth as a walker to Laurent via emergency C-section. In the present, the group loses their mule and are captured by a group of children living in their old preschool with their dying teacher, Madame Dubois. Laurent makes friends with the children, who tell him the nuns are lying to him. Needing a horse, Daryl offers to get medicine for Dubois if one of the children, Lou, helps him raid a nearby castle owned by a man dubbed La Tarasque. Inside, Daryl confronts the man, revealed as an American from Texas named R. J. Gaines, and rescues a boy he has captured. Gaines falls into his own walker moat and is devoured, while the kids rescue Daryl. Meanwhile, Dubois has died, and Daryl encourages Lou to step up as their leader. Daryl's party leaves, but Laurent expresses frustration over secrets kept from him. Codron returns to the abbey where he finds Daryl's recorded message, a picture of Laurent and a map of the group's route to Paris.
Seeing the beginning of everything from Isabelle's (Clémence Poésy) perspective was overwhelming, mainly because of the suspenseful elements inserted here. The screams at the party she was attending, the fight when she is on the bridge, and the chaos in the subway create a terror atmosphere reminiscent of the early seasons of The Walking Dead, mainly because of not knowing what was happening and how to deal with the problem.
A cleverness of the script that was really noticeable here is the approach of how Isabelle gradually realizes what is happening. She first sees walkers in the subway, then witnesses a person being attacked in a restaurant, and finally the dead driver who reanimates. In other words, the episode works with this scale of the character's discovery, until she understands the magnitude of the problem and decides to go to her home and leave Paris with her sister. During their escape, Isabelle's sister reveals she is seven months pregnant and begins to show signs that the baby is about to be born. The predictability that this child would be Laurent was obvious all along, but the episode still manages to surprise us. The fact that they tied Isabelle's story, Laurent, and the nuns during these flashbacks only shows the quality of the script that I mentioned earlier. We are once again surprised when she reveals she has been bitten, with the baby still unborn. I expected the birth to be before the transformation, but no, the boy is born moments after his mother reanimates. This explains all the symbolism placed on this child and, consequently, being named after a saint represents this.
We continue to follow the journey of Daryl, Isabelle, and Sylvie to take Laurent from point A to point B. Along the way, we meet a new community (as usual). Watching this whole part of the episode, I thought it would be another superficial community like all the others shown in the other productions. I wouldn't say this is a point out of the curve, but yes, it has a purpose in the plot. There, Laurent meets children who have things in common with him, having lived their entire lives in the apocalypse, without knowing the world before, which ends up making the boy want to stay. The most interesting thing of all is that this is the theme of the episode, the different worldviews that each character presents.
We see this worldview from the boy's point of view, Isabelle's flashbacks (which permeate the entire episode), and the moment when Daryl says a prayer at the table, showing those children what the world was like before. By the way, the text of this series seems to be incorporating a religious aspect that seems to be important for the protagonist's decisions going forward. Themes like faith and iconoclasm are being lightly added to the plot, which seems to be making this spin-off the most different in its approaches from everything we've seen in the entire The Walking Dead universe. We have a practically episodic story, almost filler I would say, in which Daryl's group meets some young survivors. The characterization and narrative style allude to tales of young revolutionaries and a beautiful fraternity, even in the adventure that takes the forefront of the episode: invading a castle where the villain is a typical stereotyped American redneck. I confess that seeing Daryl fighting with a flail in a zombie castle siege is not the worst thing in the world, in the form of superficial entertainment that this series delivers, but it lacks better direction and scene construction to aim for the medieval and swashbuckling side that the production is inspired by - the scene of Daryl jumping the bridge is one of the worst sequences the franchise has ever seen.
One thing is certain, those who value verisimilitude, logic, and a grounded story will not find interest in the spin-off. The concepts don't make sense, the allusions are arbitrary, the drama is shallow, the suspense is almost nonexistent, and the establishment of the story starts from a premise that seems to have been shouted by an intern along the lines of "what if we mix TWD with something medieval in France." The madness here has its moments, though, both for the action (in small doses) and for the scenarios, weapon choices, and even "medieval" costumes. Metaphors of religion and a narrative of odyssey will not be found here. But despite these narrative missteps, both falling into the pit full of walkers made for a good action scene, with all the elements of a good sequence: hand-to-hand combat, gory death, and explosion. With this episode sidelining Daryl for a large part of the time and putting the spotlight on Isabelle, "The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon" proves that it has much more to show and surprise. Although it is a slow episode compared to the previous one, it advances the plot a lot and leaves us even more intrigued for what comes next.
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