Why The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Blew Up A Years-Old Fan Theory

There's been plenty of shipping within the "Walking Dead" fandom, and not all of it has been in vain. For instance, some fans were shipping Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) together long before the characters actually hooked up in "The Walking Dead" season 6. It wasn't a sure thing either, as the pair never became a romantic couple in the original comic books.

Unlike "Richonne," however, many "Walking Dead" fandom ships failed to pan out. The clearest case of this would have to be Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride). When making the case for "Caryl," the shippers would point as far as back as "The Walking Dead" season 2, noting it was Daryl who put the most effort into finding Carol's lost daughter, Sophia (Madison Lintz), and that he was also the one who comforted her when it was discovered that Sophia had been turned into a walker. They'd also point to Carol's season 4 glow-up, when she evolved seamlessly from a near-background character to the show's toughest survivor; from then on, she and Daryl were on equal footing, and every scene between them was delightful.

Alas, it wasn't to be. Not only do the two never hook up throughout any of the 11 seasons of "The Walking Dead," but the spin-off series "The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon" (which picks up with Daryl in France) has since explicitly shut this fan theory down. When a character named Valentina (Irina Björklund) mistakenly assumes Daryl is Carol's boyfriend, Carol replies, "Never." Daryl agrees with her, definitively adding "Nope" and walking off. Of course, it doesn't just feel like they're talking to Valentina; it feels like they're talking directly to those watching at home.

McBride talked about the scene in a September 2025 interview with Entertainment Weekly, saying, "It's kind of a big move on [showrunner] David Zabel's part to bring that up in some way or another. It's fodder for all kinds of things online."

She added, "I think we [Reedus and I] both got a kick out of that scene, and I think it was handled well. It was light, it was fun, it was unexpected." She seemingly couldn't help but add, "And still, if I may say, there's something still a little ambiguous about it." And with that one little comment, the window opened once more, and thousands of Caryl shippers rejoiced.

Meanwhile, Reedus shared his thoughts on the scene. "I wanted to be lighthearted with it, but I wanted to definitely have an exclamation point," he explained. Rather than lightly tease the possibility of romance down the line, Reedus made it as clear as he possibly could that it's never going to happen:

"We've never implied that we were a couple in 16 years. You have fans who just want to see this one thing, and if you give it to them, it's done forever. We've really tried our hardest to take this show and make it original and make it less about zombie jump scares and who's going to hook up with who. [...] You can't really write for YouTube comments. You just can't."

Daryl and Carol's friendship over the past 15 years has scratched a similar itch to Don (Jon Hamm) and Peggy's (Elizabeth Moss) relationship in "Mad Men" or Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and Sidney's (Ayo Edebiri) friendship in "The Bear" or Tony (James Gandolfini) and Dr. Melfi's (Lorraine Bracco) dynamic in "The Sopranos." Viewers tend to love and respect TV shows in which a prominent male and female character are allowed to be friends, enjoying an emotional connection but never a romantic one. The Tony/Melfi example's a little iffy (Tony makes a few seduction attempts over the years, and she's technically not his friend but his therapist), but the show's total refusal to indulge the hornier sections of its fanbase is still notable.

You can argue that TV has actually veered too far in the other direction of late, shying away from romance to the point where platonic male/female relationships are starting to feel just as clichéd as the forced romances of old. This is why part of the "Bear" fandom's over-congratulatory tone regarding Sidney and Carmy has irked me a bit over the years; by 2022, when the show first premiered, their lack of romance was hardly as unprecedented as some fans were making it out to be. 

Still, the point remains: Sometimes, a male/female character duo are better off staying friends, even if both of them are apparently straight and single. The "Walking Dead" writers' choice to keep a Caryl romance storyline off the table because it didn't feel natural to them, even as fans pushed them on it for over a decade, is commendable. Daryl and Carol's connection has always been special, and the series has never needed romance between them to make that so.