After Daryl kills the walker, Daryl and Quinn, chained together, kill several enhanced walkers in the arena before Fallou kills the guerrier Genet ordered to shoot them. In the chaos that follows, the group escapes, with a bitten Quinn sacrificing himself to buy Daryl time, but he reanimates, forcing Laurent to put his biological father down with Daryl's encouragement. After going their separate ways from Fallou and Emile, Daryl's group resumes journeying towards Mont-Saint-Michel, but are attacked by Genet's men. Unable to kill a child, Codron shoots the other guerriers instead, promising to get revenge on Daryl later. Upon his return, Genet deduces Codron's betrayal and has him tortured for information. Daryl's group finally reaches the Nest where they settle in.
Daryl becomes conflicted between staying in France and returning to America. Union of Hope leader Losang arranges passage to Newfoundland for Daryl, who chooses to leave despite Isabelle's comparing his abandoning Laurent to Daryl's abandonment by his own father. At the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, Daryl visits the grave of his grandfather, William T. Dixon, who died on D-Day. On Omaha Beach, Daryl prepares to board a boat, but hesitates when he sees Laurent secretly followed him and has a herd of walkers closing in on him. Near Freeport, Maine, Carol searches for Daryl, finding his motorcycle. After Carol captures its hostile rider, he directs Carol to where he found it.
The episode begins with a mysterious scene, showing bodies of American soldiers killed during World War II. Initially, this scene seems to be disconnected from the rest of the episode, but when the end comes, everything makes sense and exposes the bond that Daryl already had with France, and with the mission we have been following during this season, this bond becomes even more intense.
The arena sequence with the protagonist's fight and the variants is definitely one of the best moments of this season, with exceptional direction. The moment when Daryl finishes off the variant using the French flag is visually beautiful, besides the soundtrack and slow motion that make the scene even better. The idea of bringing Quinn and tying the two characters to fight together against 4 variants shows that the series creator did not skimp on creativity. The whole sequence needs no comments because it is so well executed and choreographed.
Perhaps one of the few flaws I have to point out in this episode is the antagonists, who are practically sidelined. Genet, who had been a rising antagonist, here you simply forget that she is in the plot. The ease with which Daryl, Laurent, and Isabelle escape only exposes the weakness of the script in approaching the character, since she has a well-armed army that would never let them escape. Although this point is poorly executed, the episode manages to maintain its quality since its focus was on concluding the mission of taking Laurent to the Nest and getting Daryl back home.
This episode is perhaps the strongest in terms of approaching the relationship between the three main characters, portraying them as a family all the time. Firstly, the evolution of the boy as a character is clear, being willing to kill his father (even though he is a walker) to save his "mother." For someone who had never killed a walker, this scene is emotionally strong. Another scene that serves development is at the Nest, where Daryl is helping to bandage Isabelle, which visually rhymes with the first episode of the series when the protagonist arrives at the Convent. The approach of this entire episode is about bonds and family, and these small scenes further enhance what this journey was for Daryl.
The main focus of this episode is on family. The scene where Codron finally reaches Daryl to get his revenge and gives up when he sees the way the characters protect each other is quite symbolic. When Laurent points at him and says that God loves him, the character undergoes a key turning point and gives up on revenge, as it would lead nowhere. Again, the episode brings a narrative rhyme with what was set in the first episode about Laurent possessing something supernatural. Finally, we arrive at the long-awaited Nest, and what a perfect photograph in addition to satisfying moments. The place is visually beautiful and only highlights how impressively this series has been working on the technical aspects. Initially, I thought it would be just another generic community, but within the subsequent 5 minutes, I quickly changed my mind. The residents of the place are charismatic and give off a vibe of family and concern for each other.
Daryl's transformation and how he became attached to Laurent and Isabelle, which puts him in doubt about returning home, are clear. The final sequence ties in with the opening scene, showing that one of the dead soldiers was Daryl's grandfather. It was certainly one of the most emotional moments of The Walking Dead, Daryl visiting his grandfather's grave and getting emotional breaks the stereotype that the character is tough. This moment also serves to highlight the connections that the character has with France and to put him in conflict about returning to the United States. This sequence made Norman Reedus deliver a very strong performance that deeply moved me. To top it off, Laurent appears just as Daryl is leaving, which leads me to question whether that is real or just a hallucination. It would make a lot of sense for the character to be delirious, as if his conscience is telling him that he needs to stay to protect the family he has made. This does not mean abandoning his family in the United States, as Carol had said on the radio that everyone was okay, leading us to think that Daryl does not need to return urgently. As shown in the previous episode, Daryl had told Carol that he would return in a week, and this clearly did not happen, causing her to go after her friend alone. When Carol sees Daryl's bike being used, she realizes that something is wrong and finally gets clues about his whereabouts, putting her on a collision course with the same group that took Daryl to France.
It is possible to notice this presumption of the show's developers, going through the thematic mixture and the various historical representations they try to compress into the episodes, whether religious, medieval, or revolutionary. It's as if they were trying to do something different, but just throwing everything on the screen without a well-defined direction. After all, we end the debut year without understanding the motivations of the groups, what Laurent's relevance is in this war, and what debates are proposed by the subtext of the production. Carol's cliffhanger is a resource to make us curious about the duo's reunion, but many are totally uninterested in this arc in France, which, in addition to all these problems, maintains the franchise's trend in recent years of offering a product that underutilizes zombies and does not work suspense and horror with due respect. But the final balance of "The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon" from AMC is reasonably positive, bringing a refreshment to the franchise. Daryl leaves this series in a completely different way than he entered, presenting more layers and confirming the reasons why he is the most popular of The Walking Dead.
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