‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol’: Inside That Major Reunion (and Major Death)

[This story contains major spoilers from episode four of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol.]

After a full season and change apart, Walking Dead heroes Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and Carol Pelletier (Melissa McBride) have finally reunited — and it’s perfectly timed, as one of the other most important people in Daryl’s life has just departed.

The fourth episode of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol features the long-awaited reunion between the two title characters, in the thick of the season’s biggest action scene yet. The safe haven known as the Nest is under attack, with France’s dictatorial leader Genet (Anne Charrier) leading the charge. The chaos allows Carol to slip in (albeit, not unnoticed), and fight her way through mobs of walkers to find the person she’s been looking for all season long. 

The reunion itself plays out in the midst of a hallway fight, with Daryl finally joining the battle, morning star in hand. The camera stays on Daryl grinding his way through the walker-filled hallway, all while gunshots blare in the background, suggesting someone at the other end is closing in. The sound washes out completely as Daryl sees the person firing off the gunshots: Carol, his oldest friend in the world, suddenly standing before him in France. The two immediately embrace in a scene reminiscent of Daryl and Carol’s tearful reunion outside Terminus in the Walking Dead flagship’s fifth season premiere.

“There were many different ideas for how we should do that scene,” showrunner David Zabel tells The Hollywood Reporter. “On the one hand, we wanted to earn that moment, and didn’t want to rush it. We didn’t want it to happen [too early in the season], and plausibility demanded that it couldn’t happen too easily, anyway. So that became the plan: a midseason reunion.”

According to Zabel, there were several different iterations of the reunion, with ideas contributed by himself, fellow writer Jason Richman, and Reedus and McBride as well.

“They had really interesting ideas about it,” says Zabel of his two leads, “and we all knew it was an iconic moment, getting these two back together, so it had to be huge.”

Ultimately, the show landed on bringing Daryl and Carol back together via an action sequence, though the exact particulars weren’t settled upon until very close to filming.

“The version we filmed was written in about three days before we filmed it, which is unusually late for us,” says Zabel. “We write in advance, because this show requires a lot of prep. We don’t make big changes on the fly. We might redo scenes, but you cannot make a show like this without being targeted and without having a plan that’s been worked on for a long time. But this one, it was just so important to get right.”

He continues, “From the beginning, we knew it was the seminal moment of this show, and hopefully, when people look back on the whole of The Walking Dead, they’ll look back at this as one of the great moments. So, that’s a lot of pressure!”

The reunion between Daryl and Carol comes at the expense of a tragic departure: Isabelle, played by Clémence Poésy, one of the original Daryl Dixon cast members. Isabelle is stabbed early on in the raid on the Nest, and she manages to live long enough to stay goodbye to Daryl, thanks to an assist from Carol. It feels like an abrupt exit, especially coming so quickly after Daryl and Isabelle’s first kiss. 

“We have six episodes to tell this story,” says Zabel. “In a longer season, I don’t think it transpires exactly the way it transpires. But in order to get to where we need to get in the time we have allowed, things have to happen fast.

“The audience really responded to her,” he continues. “I’m not an aficionado of the old school Walking Dead audience, but they’re pretty tough on new characters. They liked her a lot. She’s really highly rated and appreciated by the old-timers, and that says a lot. Clémence is a great actor and she really threaded the needle of that character. It’s beautiful what she and Norman created. It’s tough to let it go.”

During the Walking Dead panel at New York Comic Con over the weekend, Zabel was joined by Reedus and McBride to talk about the Book of Carol, with Reedus weighing in on Daryl’s relationship with Isabelle and McBride talking about how finding Daryl has been her sole motivation. “She needs her friend,” she said, of how losing Daryl has triggered the different version of Carol viewers have been seeing. “She needs her best friend and he’s not there, and she’s worried about him. And I think that’s what triggers that. She will go to any lengths to find him, also becoming very manipulative.”

Of Daryl and Carol’s bond, Reedus spoke of how they’ve been watching out for each other for the entirety of the franchise: “They both come from a place of abuse, and they just always had each other’s back. So when you see them on screen now, it’s earned, like it’s not actors playing the part of somebody who has known each other for a long time. It’s for real.” (Zabel, during the panel, also told viewers to keep their eyes peeled for an Easter egg bit of franchise mythology in the background this season.)

Isabelle isn’t even the only major death of the episode, meanwhile, as series antagonist Genet (Anne Charrier) dies as well. It’s an episode with series finale energy, but there are still two rounds in the chamber before Daryl Dixon empties the clip.

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The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol season two releases new episodes Sundays at 9 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. PT on AMC. Follow along with THR‘s season coverage here, and keep track of the franchise spinoffs.