The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Is Basically Mad Max In France With Zombies
You've heard of "Emily in Paris." Now get ready for "Daryl in Marseille," the latest quirky series about an American experiencing culture shock after a spontaneous career move brings them to France.
Actually, the official title (for the sake of brand recognition) is "The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon." The six-episode spin-off show picks up after the series finale of "The Walking Dead," which ended with Daryl riding off towards the horizon on his motorcycle. After a mysterious journey across the Atlantic (perhaps he converted his bike into a jet-ski), he finds himself washing up on the shores of Marseille and embarking on a new adventure in a new country where he does not speak the language. Just like Emily.
The idea for "The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon" first began to take root somewhere around 2016, and was inspired by star Norman Reedus' AMC series "Ride with Norman Reedus," in which he would ride his motorbike to a different city each week to check out the local biker culture. "A lot of the credit has to go to Norman," says executive producer Greg Nicotero, in a feature about the show for the October 2023 issue of SFX magazine. "I remember him standing in my kitchen in Georgia talking about, 'Wouldn't it be great if Daryl had a "Then Came Bronson" sort of vibe?'"
Between the premise of that 1969 series starring Michael Parks, and his own experiences exploring the country on his motorcycle, Reedus got stuck on the concept. "He just loved the idea of Daryl exploring the world and coming across a lot of different groups of people," says Nicotero. "He held onto that idea for a long time."
Daryl Dixon: Road Warrior
There are a lot of cultural touchstones for "The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon," including HBO's recent apocalyptic drama "The Last of Us" and the video games that inspired it (which, in turn, were partly inspired by "The Walking Dead"). Though ratings for the flagship show began to slip around season 8, Nicotero saw the success of "The Last of Us" as a sign that "The Walking Dead" wasn't dead yet. It just needed a bit of a shake-up.
Robert Heinlein's 1961 sci-fi novel "Stranger in a Strange Land" was another influence, though that story has become so ingrained in pop culture that it's more of a meta-influence at this point. But when development on "Daryl Dixon" began in earnest in 2020 and the spin-off began to take shape, it took on the shape of one particular movie, according to Nicotero: "Mad Max 2," also known as "The Road Warrior."
"When I was talking to David [Zabel, showrunner] initially about the show, I kept referring to it very much like 'The Road Warrior,' where you come upon Mad Max in the desert and he connects with this group of people. I said, 'This feels like our version of Mad Max' [...] It's a road show when Daryl shows up in Marseille, and then has his trek through post-apocalyptic France."
Similar to "The Road Warrior," which picked up after we witnessed the tragic loss of Max's family and his descent into madness in "Mad Max," Daryl's solo series begins with a lone warrior whom "Walking Dead" fans have already gotten to know over 11 seasons of the original show. That's a lot of hours of TV, so making "The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon" feel fresh presented a challenge.
France has fewer redshirts
"One of the things that we always talked about on 'The Walking Dead' was that any time a new character showed up, you pretty much knew they were goners because there were so many people in the cast," says Nicotero. It's true that the show had a revolving door of characters, and it was unwise to get attached to anyone. Daryl is one of a very small number of surviving characters from season 1, and two of the most devastating deaths in the series — Sophia Peletier and Beth Greene — were made all the more effective because of how invested Daryl had been in keeping those character alive.
When "The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon" begins, around 14 years have passed since the advent of the zombie apocalypse. And in France, Daryl will discover new walker variants, including fast zombies and zombies that ooze acid from their skin. With those things in mind, it makes sense that the tiny fraction of the population that's still alive will be made up of survivors: people who were smart enough and strong enough to make it through the last 14 years without being bitten, devoured, or killed by the living.
That will be one of the key differences between "The Walking Dead" and "Daryl Dixon," according to Nicotero. Not every interaction has to end with Daryl's new acquaintances getting written off in brutal ways: "He might come across a couple of people that we see once or twice, and we never see them again because it's a road movie."
(Of course, that doesn't mean we won't still get the odd bloodbath. This is still "The Walking Dead," after all.)
"The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon" premieres Sunday, September 10, on AMC, though AMC+ subscribers can watch it from September 7 on the streaming service.