The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus talked candidly about his upcoming spin-off during a panel at New York Comic Con last weekend.
“It’s going to be fun, and there’ll be a lot of familiar faces,” Reedus teased during the panel. The actor’s Daryl Dixon character has not only been one of the longest-running faces on the 11-season series, but he’ll also be getting his own spin-off in 2023.
The spin-off, aptly named Daryl Dixon, was originally supposed to feature co-star Melissa McBride as his long-time friend, Carol Peletier. But the actress cited concerns about filming for so long overseas in France after doing 11 seasons of The Walking Dead.
“Relocating to Europe became logistically untenable for Melissa at this time,” AMC said in a statement on McBride’s behalf. “We know fans will be disappointed by this news, but The Walking Dead Universe continues to grow and expand in interesting ways and we very much hope to see Carol again in the near future.”
And see, that’s the fun part. McBride herself hinted at her return last month, saying, “I feel like Carol has more story to tell. I’ll leave it at that. I think she’s got some more story.”
But it was last weekend’s TWD panel that really fired up the speculation. “Their journey’s not over,” Reedus said on stage at the Con. “They will meet down the road. You can pretty much bet all your money. I read all these people whining about it, and I have to just keep my mouth shut, but there will be a lot of foots in a lot of mouths at some point.”
I totally just read that in Daryl’s voice.
So what other “familiar faces” could Reedus be talking about on the show? There’s been massive speculation about Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) making a come-back on the spin-off, although it’s already been announced that he and Michonne (Danai Gurira) will have their own spin-off. So who else would work best in Daryl’s world? And in France, at that?
We can only speculate at this point, but for a while there, Daryl and Connie (Lauren Ridloff) seemed to hit it off. And Daryl has always had intense respect for Maggie (Lauren Cohan), although she’s supposed to be tied up in her own spin-off entitled Dead City with Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).
Will Daryl take Judith (Cailey Fleming) with him to France? That would be an interesting dynamic. Very “The Last of Us” if you ask me.
I guess we’ll just need to wait and see, but in the mean time, the final season of The Walking Dead is currently running on AMC and AMC+. Be sure to read our reviews and recaps of every episode each week.
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