[This story contains spoilers from the season three finale of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, “Solaz Del Mar.”]
After fifteen years in the zombie apocalypse trenches, Daryl Dixon is approaching the end of the line. Luckily for Walking Dead fans, the character Daryl Dixon and the show Daryl Dixon are two different things altogether.
The third season finale of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon has now come and gone, leaving only one more season of the Norman Reedus-starring spinoff of the flagship series. Does that mean we’re reaching the end of Daryl’s story altogether? Almost certainly not, as there are numerous other avenues where the fan-favorite crossbow-slinger could appear, from existing shows like The Walking Dead: Dead City to any number of as-yet unannounced projects.
Still, the imminent conclusion of this iteration of the character hangs heavy over Reedus; while fans are busy processing the events of season three’s finale, in which Daryl and Carol (Melissa McBride) watched their latest attempt to return home go up in literal flames, Reedus himself is in the thick of filming the final stretch of Daryl Dixon season four, now well underway on location in Spain.
“We’re on episode six of season four,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter, speaking after a whirlwind trip home from Spain, following a whirlwind night shoot. “We’re getting really close.”
In other words, it’s not time to break out the celebratory can of hot dogs just yet, as Daryl and Carol haven’t spent their last night in Spain, despite what they imagined for themselves as season three came to an end on Sunday night. But it’s time to start planning which condiments we’re going to use at the very least. Below, Reedus talks to THR about the journey of Daryl Dixon, from the recently concluded season three to the soon-to-be-concluded filming of season four.
***
You’re getting close to the end. How does that feel? Clearly we’re here to talk about the end of three, but it has to feel surreal that you’re simultaneously close to the end of the show in real time.
Yeah. There’s a David Bowie quote that goes something like, “What do you think your last words are going to be before you die?” And he said they would be, “But, but, but!” (Laughs.) And that’s kind of how I feel.
Is it shaping up in ways that you expected? Is it surprising you, the final stretch?
You know, it’s different. This show has always coincided with my life a bit. With season four, Daryl really goes inside [himself], and so, I’m inside, too. I’m in my head a lot, especially for the episode we’re filming now. It’s filling my head with the future, the past and the present of this character.
There’s this moment in the season three finale where Daryl and Carol are chatting, and Daryl talks about feeling the need to run away every time he finds himself feeling at home. I can imagine in some ways that connects with you, having played Daryl for 15 years now.
It’s trippy. There’s always more story you can tell, but this incarnation of what we’re doing is wrapping up in a perfect way. It’s answering all of these reasons why and what all of it has meant, and what have we done to get here? What are the mistakes we made to get here? And what can we do to have a better life for ourselves? So it’s all very trippy, what we’re working on right now. There’s a lot of internal fact-checking that I’m doing, and that the character is doing, and watching things happen around me that I never expected.
That’s the beauty of the spinoff. Someone asked me recently, when I was doing season one, would I have thought about what I was doing in season four? And we just didn’t do it that way. There’s no season in the future already written when we’re working on the first. It’s created organically as we go along. I don’t even think South Park can do that. They see what’s happening in the world and create from it. So I would hate to do this show any other way. We organically come up with ideas for storylines as we’re filming.
That conversation you mention came out of a last minute insert I’d come up with alongside [showrunner David Zabel and executive producer Jason Richman}. I knew some of where we could be heading for in season four. And this sort of felt like a precipice; the going-off point for season four. We have some stories to deal with that we started in seasons one and two. For me, and for Daryl, that was a big turning point, that conversation on the beach.
Melissa McBride as Carol Peletier with Eduardo Noriega as Antonioe in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season three finale.
Carla Oset/AMC
It’s juxtaposed with some glimpses of Daryl’s childhood we see throughout the season, with flashbacks to Merle (Michael Rooker) and the abuse he suffered back at his original home.
Yeah. There’s so much momentum on shows like these, that it can often be hard to find the space to slow down and think about that pre-apocalypse life.
But when you do stop for those kinds of things, you can’t help but remember how hard Daryl’s life has been from the very beginning. There was never a soft point for him. So for him to even open up in this way with Carol and think about his life in this way marks huge progress since we first met him in the woods of Georgia.
That’s a huge point that we’re in right now, a huge subject of what we’re filming. Especially the episode we’re doing at the moment.
Speaking of conversations between Daryl and Carol, there’s one I really appreciated earlier in the season: Daryl and Carol making it extremely, abundantly clear they’ve never hooked up. Good to have it in canon!
I have to give it up to David Zabel for that. Because there was a time when some people might have written for the show who would read Twitter, and then it was like they were writing for Twitter. I could pick out those moments sometimes. But David, he isn’t part of that world. “I can do something different,” he said.
I just want to be sure… Daryl and Carol didn’t eat that last can of hot dogs yet, right?
Right. We haven’t eaten them.
Chekhov’s Hot Dogs are still alive for the final season?
Yeah, but I fucking hate those hot dogs. (Laughs.) I would barf if I had to eat that. The can’s dented, too! There’s gotta be some botulism in there.
Great premise for the next spinoff!
(Laughs.) It’s not going to be good when we open those up.
***
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season three is now streaming on AMC+.
