[Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 episode 4, “Feisty Friendly.”] It can be difficult keeping track of time in the apocalypse. We know that August 27, 2010, is the day the world ended in The Walking Dead universe, and that The Walking Dead: Dead City takes place furthest in the timeline (season 2 is set circa 2027). In the first season, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) generously estimates he first formed the Saviors some “12, 15 years ago,” not long before Negan’s gang forced the pregnant Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and her husband Glenn (Steven Yeun) to their knees in the sixth season finale of The Walking Dead.

Glenn’s “Last Day on Earth,” as the episode was titled, was in 2012. Months after Negan took his barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat to Glenn’s head, Maggie gave birth to Glenn’s son, the now 15-year-old Hershel Rhee (Logan Kim).

That means that Glenn died just about two years into the apocalypse, and that the events of the first seven seasons of The Walking Dead — from the CDC, to the farm, the prison, and then to Terminus and Alexandria — all happened in the span of less than 24 months. So it’s understandable that Maggie may have misremembered when a sweet moment with her late husband actually took place.

RELATED: The Walking Dead: Dead City’s Hershel Twist Explained

In Sunday’s “Feisty Friendly” episode of Dead City, Maggie and New Babylon Federation Colonel Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles) reminiscence about the old world and the food they miss most. For Armstrong, it’s a breakfast sandwich you’d get from a hole-in-the-wall bodega. For Maggie, it’s a Kit-Kat.

“Sometimes, early on, you’d luck out and find a candy bar. Last time I saw a candy bar was three years in. It was my birthday, and he surprised me,” Maggie recalls somberly, referencing Glenn without uttering his name.

That scene has now come under scrutiny as a potential timeline discrepancy. “Three years in” to the apocalypse would date Maggie’s candy bar birthday present from Glenn to have happened in 2013, by which time Glenn was dead.

It’s not a scene that played out on The Walking Dead, so it’s hard to say for sure when the exchange might have happened. But there was about an eight-month time jump between seasons 2 and 3 (when Maggie, Glenn, and the rest of group left the Greene farm for the prison), and another months-long time skip between seasons 3 and 4. There’s also about a month between the death of Maggie’s sister, Beth (Emily Kinney), and the group arriving at Alexandria in season 5. Some two weeks after that, Maggie reveals she’s pregnant, and Glenn dies not even two months later.

As difficult as it may be to believe that Maggie misremembered the last time she broke off a piece of a Kit-Kat bar some 15 years ago, a lot happened in a short amount of time. And let’s remember: there’s no real keeping track of time in the apocalypse.

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 air Sundays on AMC and AMC+.

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Characters die in comic books all the time. The death of an important friend or loved one is a classic way to either inspire or enrage a hero, villains dying can make for some of the most downright insane encounters and fallout, and a hero dying can be one of the most emotionally impactful moments of an entire run. Even with death being a revolving door in most modern day comics, some of the most important and remembered moments of all time are the deaths of beloved characters. However, not all deaths are remembered for being beautiful, climactic moments. Some stay in the public consciousness because of how horrific they are, and how they nearly made the readers puke all over their graphic novels.

Let’s take a look at seven of the most gruesome and stomach-wrenching ways comic book characters have met their makers over the years. If you’re squeamish or don’t want to see your favorite characters’ guts strewn across the panel, I suggest you look away. But if you clicked on this list you know what you’re here for, so let’s get into it.

7) Alex DeWitt Invented Fridging

Alexandra DeWitt was first introduced as the girlfriend of Kyle Rayner, then the new Green Lantern. In Green Lantern volume three #54, Alex is attacked and killed by Green Lantern’s then enemy Major Force. Major Force doesn’t just kill Alex, but instead brutally rips her apart and shoves her mangled, dismembered corpse into Kyle’s refrigerator. Beyond being an incredibly gruesome moment, Alex’s death caused comic legend Gail Simone to coin the “women in refrigerators” phrase, more colloquially called fridging, which represents when women are often savagely killed off for no other reason than to further the development of a male character and shock value. It was the final straw that started a movement to petition for better treatment of women in comic books, and while that is indisputably amazing, it only could have happened because of how downright atrocious this death was.

6) The Blob Ate Wasp Like a Chicken Wing

Speaking of fridging, this horrible act of cannibalism came in Ultimatum #2. Marvel’s original Ultimate Universe is well known for being very gorey and having far more gruesome versions of everyone’s beloved characters. In this infamous storyline, Magneto decided that humanity needed to be entirely wiped away, and used his vast magnetic powers to literally shake the planet’s continents, flooding the world with tidal waves unlike anything anyone has ever seen. In the midst of the chaos, Janet Van Dyne, the Wasp, goes missing. Her husband Yellowjacket eventually finds her, but is horrified to see that villain the Blob has killed Wasp and is eating her corpse. Apparently, she tasted like chicken. It was a nauseating scene in a nauseating book, and was immediately followed up by the enraged Hank Pym biting off Blob’s head in a gratuitously bloody and ironic revenge.

5) Ma Gnucci Lost Her Limbs and Burned Alive

Ma Gnucci was the head of the Gnucci crime family, a mafia-like group that once commanded all organized crime in New York. Unfortunately for her, this drew Ma Gnucci the ire of the Punisher, who wanted to make a big splash in his return to “cleaning up” the criminal underworld. She tried to have her men kill Frank Castle in the Central Park Zoo, only for Frank to dispose of her men and toss her into the polar bear pit. Somehow, Ma Gnucci survived being eaten alive by a pack of polar bears, but lost all of her limbs and her scalp in the process. Her final fate came in Punisher volume five #12, where Frank tossed her back inside her safehouse after he lit it on fire. This horrible death had steps to it, and all of them were absolutely abysmal.

[RELATED: 10 Weakest Marvel Characters, Ranked]

4) The Flash Disintegrated Saving the Multiverse

Barry Allen was one of DC’s most popular and beloved characters and remains so to this day, which is what made his death in Crisis on Infinite Earths #8 all the more shocking. The Anti-Monitor had nearly beaten all of the multiverse’s greatest heroes and villains in his quest to destroy everything, and was going to use his Anti-Matter Cannon to eradicate every world there ever was and ever would be. Only the Flash was able to stand against this plan. He found the Anti-Matter Core and raced around it, creating a speed vortex that absorbed all of the Anti-Matter energy into himself. Unfortunately, this led to Barry’s body literally falling apart as he ran. He withered away to skin and bones, every step infusing him with more energy that literally sapped his life force. Eventually, the Flash’s body completely fell apart, and he was nothing more than dust as he ran his final steps. What makes this even worse is that the hero had no rest, as his soul was accepted into the Speed Force, where he spent the next two decades running away from the Black Flash, the speedster embodiment of death. Tragic, powerful, and one of the best deaths in all of comics, period.

3) Spider-Man Ate Mary Jane and Aunt May

For some reason, there’s more than one act of cannibalism on this list, which is just a sign that things are not okay in comic books. Marvel Zombies is exactly what it sounds like, an entire universe of all of Marvel’s heroes and villains zombified and wanting to eat every living thing they can get their hands on. One of the most tragic and gut-wrenching deaths of all came just after Spider-Man was infected, when he went home to attempt to get Mary Jane and Aunt May out of harm’s way. Unfortunately, the infection became too strong to resist, and Spider-Man was consumed by the Hunger. Spider-Man ate Mary Jane, and told Aunt May to run away because he couldn’t control himself, but there was no way for an old woman to hobble away from Spider-Man. This one still kept me up at night when I was a kid, and frankly, it still might.

2) Lori’s Corpse Smothered Her Baby

The only non-superhero entry on our list, Lori Grimes and her baby daughter Judith were both killed in The Walking Dead #48. While trying to escape from Woodbury, when the Governor commands Lily to shoot her in the back. Unfortunately, not only did this shot instantly kill Lori, but she fell on top of her infant daughter, killing Judith as well.This double death is really one of the most horrible ones in all of comics, as it’s hard to imagine a worse fate than accidentally killing your own child, even if you die in the process. Even worse, after Woodbury was overrun both of their bodies were devoured by Walkers, only adding insult to their terrible deaths.

1) Multiple Man Absorbs His Baby

The only thing worse than accidentally killing your own child and dying with them is accidentally killing your child and having to live with it. Multiple Man is a mutant with the ability to create and later absorb duplicates of himself. One night while drunk, a duplicate slept with fellow mutant Siryn, and she wound up pregnant. In X-Factor volume three #39, Siryn went into labor, and the two even decided to get married and raise the child together, whom Siryn named Sean, after her recently deceased father. Unfortunately, as Multiple Man held his child, his body absorbed young Sean until he ceased to exist, his body treating him as nothing more than another duplicate. It was a truly horrifying moment that forever scarred both Multiple Man and Siryn, and I can’t imagine something more horrible than being unable to avoid erasing your own child from existence.

So there we have seven of the most brutal and horrible ways to go that have ever been shown in a comic book. This list definitely doesn’t cover anywhere near all the weird and horrible ways that people have perished over the comic years, so let us know what other strange comic deaths you know in the comments below!

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AMC Networks is honoring a member of The Walking Dead family. On Sunday, the network aired a special dedication to Frank Hildebrand, a unit production manager and producer of Fear the Walking Dead seasons 2-8 from 2016 until 2023. Hildebrand, who also appeared on screen in a small role as stranded German tourist Hildy in the eighth and final season of Fear the Walking Dead, died Nov. 21, 2024, after a brief illness. He was 73.

“With respect and love to Frank Hildebrand, 1950-2024. From AMC and The Walking Dead Universe,” reads the tribute card that appeared before credits rolled on the May 11 episode of The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2, the first Walking Dead series to air on the network since Hildebrand’s death in November.

Scott M. Gimple, an executive producer of Fear the Walking Dead and the chief content officer who oversees AMC’s TWD Universe, previously paid tribute to Hildebrand with a photo showing the line producer posed with the SWAT van that once belonged to Althea on the set of Fear.

“We lost a great 1: FTWD’s Frank Hildebrand,” Gimple tweeted in November. “A maestro of mitigating madness & creating calm in the storm of 16 eps/yr, he knew how to work & how to play, all with class. He’s 1 of those people who sticks w/you: a notable character of character. We were lucky to know & work w/him.”

RELATED: The Walking Dead: Dead City Episode 2 Twist Ending Explained

Hildebrand previously made a cameo as a Lawton Ranger in the Fear the Walking Dead season 6 episode “Welcome to the Club” before briefly appearing as Hildy in the second half of season 8. Fear showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg told AMC.com in 2023 that the minor role of Hildy — a councilmember of the German-speaking group that holed up in the Emissary Suites Hotel in Georgia during the initial outbreak — was written “specifically with Frank in mind” due to his Swiss German heritage. “He’s multi-hyphenate and multi-talented,” Chambliss said, referring to Hildebrand acting while serving as the show’s line producer.

Hildebrand is credited on nearly 100 episodes of Fear the Walking Dead, with location shoots in Mexico, Austin, Texas, and Savannah, Georgia. According to his resume, the veteran producer was fluent in English, German, French, and Italian. A member of both the DGA (Directors Guild of America) and the PGA (Producers Guild of America), Hildebrand’s first credit was as an assistant line producer on 1981’s Savage Harvest, a Mexico and Kenya-shot horror thriller about man-eating lions.

Over his 40-year career, Hildebrand also served as a co-line producer on Vice Squad (1982), as a producer/line producer on the Jim Carrey vampire comedy Once Bitten (1985), and a line producer on the Oliver Stone-executive produced Freeway (1996) and Miramax’s live-action Beowulf (1999). He also executive produced 2006’s The Hills Have Eyes with producer Wes Craven and 2007’s Into the Wild, the twice Oscar-nominated road trip drama directed by Sean Penn.

As executive in charge of production for River Road Entertainment, Hildebrand oversaw the Penn and Naomi Watts-starrer Fair Game (2010), coming-of-age biopic The Runaways (2010), and the Best Picture-nominated The Tree of Life (2011), starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, and Penn.

Per his IMDb, Hildebrand is slated to appear in Celluloid Wizards in the Video Wasteland: The Saga of Empire Pictures, a crowdfunded feature-length documentary “about the rise and fall of Empire Pictures, the most ambitious B-movie studio in the 1980s.” For Empire Studios, Hildebrand served as a line producer on the 1987 film Prison and the 1989 film Robot Jox.

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[Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead City episode 2, “Another Shitty Lesson.”] Some mothers get flowers or greeting cards for Mother’s Day, but Maggie (Lauren Cohan) received a series of explosive surprises when she made a trip back to the island of Manhattan in Sunday’s episode of The Walking Dead: Dead City. The episode, titled “Another Shitty Lesson,” picked up where last week’s left off, with Maggie and a Negan-gunning Ginny (Mahina Napoleon) en route from the Bricks to the mainland after being conscripted into the New Babylon Federation Army.

Maggie’s son Hershel (Logan Kim) protested staying behind, but relented when she asked about the city’s hold over him and the mysterious woman in his drawings. New Babylon’s soldiers then made their way to New York to take over the Croat’s (Željko Ivanek) methane operation as the Dama (Lisa Emery) strong-armed a captive Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) into uniting and leading the city’s gangs against the imminent invasion.

RELATED: What to Remember Before You Watch The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2

New Babylon Governor Byrd (Jasmin Walker), Colonel Armstrong (Gaius Charles), Major General Houseman (Anthony Molinari), and Major Narvaez (Dascha Polanco) didn’t heed Maggie’s warnings about crossing the bay by ferry, which proceeded to sail into methane bomb-infested waters as Negan and the Croat’s Burazi firebombed the boat transporting 50 New Babylon soldiers across the Hudson from Bayonne, New Jersey.

It turned out that the Croat was tipped off by a smoke signal from a stack of burning tires on the dock — and that a stowaway Hershel sent the signal. Maggie realized Hershel was the culprit when she watched her son apply a tourniquet to a soldier wounded in the ferry attack, recognizing the tourniquet was made from the distinctive blue cloth that was used to start the tire fire.

By episode’s end, Maggie, Hershel, Ginny, Armstrong, Narvaez, and about a dozen New Babylon soldiers were the only survivors of an ambush that blew Byrd and Houseman to smithereens alongside more than half their forces. Hershel then embraced Maggie in a tender hug, telling her, “I love you, mom.” As a somber Maggie cried, she told her son, “I love you, too.”

Why did Hershel alert the Croat about New Babylon’s plans? That can be explained by his connection to the woman in his drawings: the Dama, the power broker who had the Croat kidnap Hershel last season. The Dama did this so Maggie would bring the fugitive Negan from the mainland to Manhattan in order to lead the factions of rival gangs under Bruegel (Kim Coates) and Christos (Jake Weary). As for why the Dama has such a hold on Hershel, even after taking his toe? That remains to be revealed in episodes ahead.

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+.

The post The Walking Dead: Dead City’s Hershel Twist Explained appeared first on ComicBook.com.

London’s Tower Bridge has fallen down. Sunday’s season premiere of The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 returned to New York City, but those who tuned in on AMC caught a glimpse at the apocalypse on the other side of the pond in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 3. A new teaser trailer (below) shows Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride) being ferried past London’s dilapidated Tower Bridge by Stephen Merchant’s as-yet-unnamed character, only to then cut to a poncho-wearing Daryl on a motorbike mid-shootout in what appears to be Spain’s Tabernas Desert.

“I was pretty young when all this started,” Daryl says in the sneak peek. “Now all we do is run and fight. It ain’t no way to live.”

RELATED: How The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2 Finale Sets up Season 3

The last we saw Daryl and Carol in 2024’s The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol, the best friends had reunited in France, and chose to stay behind together so that light aircraft pilot Ash (Manish Dayal) could fly Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) out of Paris to safety in America.

After escaping the remnants of Madame Genet’s (Anne Charrier) Pouvoir, Daryl and Carol made their way back into Île-de-France to find passage to England in order to cross the Atlantic Ocean and get home to America.

They made their way underground through the Channel Tunnel, an undersea tunnel linking northern France to southern England, and survived duplicitous Scots Angus (Matt Swift) and Fiona (Sarah McCardie) before embarking on the 31-mile trek to their next destination.

Following a trip through London, the Madrid-based third season of Daryl Dixon largely takes place in Spain. The Walking Dead spinoff filmed on location in the Galicia, Aragón, Catalonia and Valencia regions of Spain, which provide “a new and unique backdrop for the post-apocalyptic world,” according to network AMC.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 3 “tracks Carol and Daryl as they continue their journey towards home and the ones they love,” the logline states. “As they struggle to find their way back, the path takes them farther astray, leading them through distant lands with ever-changing and unfamiliar conditions as they witness the various effects of the Walker apocalypse.”

In addition to Reedus and McBride, the new season guest stars Stephen Mercant (The Outlaws) with Spanish actors Eduardo Noriega (The Devil’s Backbone, Vantage Point), Óscar Jaenada (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Hernán) and Alexandra Masangkay (Días mejores, Valley of Shadows) cast as series regulars. Candela Saitta (Máxima, Último primer día) and Hugo Arbués (the Through My Window trilogy, Past Lies) have also been cast in recurring roles.

Season 3 of Daryl Dixon airs this fall on AMC and AMC+.

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It’s been 651 days since The Walking Dead last took a bite out of the Big Apple, but on Sunday night, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) return in The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2. Once again set on the Isle of the Dead that is New York City — which has been without electricity ever since the lights went out at the onset of the outbreak some 18 years earlier — the new season finds Maggie and Negan in the middle of a literal power struggle between the New Babylon Federation and the gangs of New York.

Whether you’ve forgotten a few things since we last saw Maggie and Negan in 2023, or if you need a refresher on the cliffhanger that ended the first season, here’s everything you need to remember before the new season of Dead City premieres tonight, Sunday, May 4, at 9 p.m. ET on AMC.

RELATED: The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 Review: Lauren Cohan & Jeffrey Dean Morgan Power Pulpy Season

Maggie and Negan went into New York City together — and Maggie left him there

Last season, Maggie was forced to track down Negan after his former Savior underling, the Croat (Željko Ivanek), kidnapped her son Hershel (Logan Kim) from their home at the Bricks, the new Hilltop colony. Negan, a wanted man pursued by New Babylon Marshal Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles), agreed to help Maggie get her son back from the Croat if she would take in and shelter his orphaned ward, Ginny (Mahina Napoleon). Maggie also reminded Negan that she owed him: he brutally murdered her husband, Glenn (Steven Yeun), in front of her when she was pregnant with Hershel.

After Maggie and Negan survived the mean streets of New York City together, it turned out that the Croat strongarmed Maggie into bringing the fugitive Negan from the mainland to Manhattan. Maggie gave up Negan to the Croat, who proceeded to hand him over to the Dama (Lisa Emery), a power broker who wanted Negan to unite and lead the city’s gangs to defend the island’s natural resources from New Babylon.

Power equals power

That “natural resource” is the methane gas that the Croat produces by turning the island’s abundant amount of corpses into fuel, enough to generate electricity and restore power to New York City. (After all, people are a resource.)

Whoever controls the methane operation wields the power, so the Dama mounted their defense just as New Babylon Governor Byrd (Jasmin Walker) had Armstrong inform her about the methane to replace the thousands of acres of corn fields required to produce New Babylon’s ethanol supply.

Negan: Wanted dead or alive

After doggedly pursuing Negan from the mainland to the island, Armstrong claimed he shot and killed the fugitive when questioned by his superiors. In reality, the marshal let Negan go because he saved his life (a not-quite-selfless act: “They pin your death on me, and I’m wanted twice as bad,” Negan explained).

Meanwhile, someone else switched sides to bring Negan to justice: Ginny, who learned that Negan lied to her. Ginny’s father was one of the four men Negan killed along with a New Babylon magistrate — but only because the five men attacked and robbed his wife, Annie (Medina Senghore), almost killing her. When Negan found out that Ginny followed him to New York, he falsely claimed he only took her in because she was a “debt” that he had to pay, but those harsh words were his way to get Ginny to return to the safety of the Bricks with Maggie.

Mother Dama

Season 1 ended with Maggie rescuing Hershel from the Croat and the Dama, who cut off Hershel’s toe and then gave it to Negan as a reminder to keep her new enforcer line. But once mother and son were reunited, Hershel expressed his resentment towards Maggie: “Seemed like you cared more about revenge,” he said of Maggie’s “obsession” with the man who murdered his father.

“I’m right here. But you don’t see me. It’s like my whole life you’ve been looking over my shoulder, watching for him, waiting for him,” Hershel told Maggie. “But you never see me.” Back at the Bricks, Maggie found Hershel’s drawings of a woman whose face she didn’t know: the Dama.

Tranquilitas Ordinis

“Tranquility, order, justice, the law.” That’s the motto of New Babylon, capital city of the federation of states that harshly enforces the law among its treaty-bound members. But the colonizing New Babylon Federation began to expand its powers when Governor Byrd set her sights on new territory: New York City.

The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 premieres May 4 on AMC and AMC+, with new episodes airing Sundays.

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If the first season of The Walking Dead: Dead City was Escape From New York, then the second season is The Warriors. Set on the gritty, ultra-violent streets of a dystopian New York City, the 1979 cult classic begins with a conclave of territorial gangs — an attempt at a truce to unite and secure their turfs against a common enemy. The pulpy gang movie is, in effect, a live-action comic book, its themed tribes rooted in fantasy rather than any sort of street-gang realism.

The sophomore season of Dead City is more comic book-y and even pulpier than the first, which sent longtime enemies Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) on a mission together into post-apocalyptic New York. They went there under the pretense of rescuing Maggie’s son Hershel (Logan Kim) from one of Negan’s former Savior underlings, the Croat (Željko Ivanek), but in a season-ending twist, it turned out that Maggie betrayed Negan. She handed him over to the Croat (who strong-armed Maggie into bringing Negan from the mainland to Manhattan in exchange for her son), and then Maggie returned home with Hershel, having traded Negan to the Dama (Lisa Emery), a power broker who wanted Negan to unite and lead the city’s gangs in order to protect the island’s natural resources from outsiders.

That natural resource is the Croat’s methane made from the abundant amount of zombie bodies on the island, and those outsiders are the soldiers of the New Babylon Federation: colonizers from the mainland out to take over the electricity-generating methane operation to replace their dwindling supply of ethanol and bring back the old world.

The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 premiere (Sunday, May 4th, at 9 p.m. ET on AMC and AMC+) picks up about a year after the Season 1 finale. The Bricks (a relocated Hilltop colony) is now a member of the New Babylon Federation of territories under the authority of Governor Byrd (Jasmin Walker), who sends Colonel Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles), a former marshal, and the stringent Major Narvaez (Dascha Polanco) to draft soldiers for an “exploratory mission” to take back New York. Once the capital of the world and since overrun by the dead and lawless barbarians, the New Babylonians are out to restore law and order — and power — to make Manhattan a bastion for civilization. To do so, they need to seize the methane.

Maggie is conscripted into New Babylon’s army, and agrees to return to the island without resistance if no one else from the Bricks is forced into enlisting, including her son. Ginny (Mahina Napoleon), a friend of Negan’s until she learned he killed her father, volunteers so she can get back to Manhattan and get her revenge, and Hershel ends up sneaking along to the island for his own reasons.

Meanwhile, in New York, Negan is a prisoner of the Dama. From his cell, he’s reduced to eating cockroaches and relieving himself in buckets, but he’s confident that the Dama and the Burazi pose no threat to Hershel because he’s safe with Maggie. (“She is a mama bear that would tear out your throat with her teeth right after she gutted you with her claws,” he warns the Croat.) Learning of New Babylon’s plans to invade the island, the Dama plays a different card: she forces Negan to comply by threatening his wife and son, Annie (Medina Senghore) and Joshua.

The influence of The Warriors is never felt more than when the Dama has Negan gather the New York gangs to form an alliance against the New Babylon Federation. Wearing a black leather jacket and wielding a replica of his barbed wire-covered baseball bat Lucille (newly upgraded to deliver electric jolts), Morgan comfortably slips into the old Negan, a persona he used to terrorize Rick Grimes and his group back on The Walking Dead. He’s putting on a show as instructed by the Dama, giving Morgan a chance to gleefully embrace the villain Negan who had that part of him snuffed out by nearly a decade in jail. But when he drops the facade, Morgan’s Negan is wearier, contrite, and, some might say, softer. Morgan goes from one to the other — sometimes in the same scene — without a hitch, his humanizing performance selling just how much Negan, now a father, is a changed man.

Negan and the Croat are tasked with convincing two of Uptown’s three territorial clans to join the Dama, bringing them into conflict with gang leaders Christos (Animal Kingdom‘s Jake Weary) and Bruegel (Sons of Anarchy‘s Kim Coates). The latter is a scene-chewing, Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday type, an extravagantly dressed gambler and wild card described as a “slippery, silver-tongued eel” and played with aplomb by Coates.

Regrettably, the third clan, the Foragers, are the kind of cartoonish characters who would be at home among the goofier gangs in The Warriors. As their name implies, the holistic people led by Roksana (Pooya Mohseni) reside in Central Park, a no man’s land overrun by tall grass and wild zoo animals (who are heard, but not seen). Taking the term “urban jungle” too literally, their style of dress can only be described as Tarzanesque, making the Foragers resemble tribal humans from Planet of the Apes and too much of a departure from the otherwise punkish, Mad Max aesthetic. (Not to mention that too much of the plot takes place in the “jungle” that the urban park has become, which means eschewing the darkened concrete jungle that is New York for the same plain forest setting that has been seen on every other Walking Dead series.)

Still, the second season does make use of more iconic New York locations after the first season showed a decaying Statue of Liberty and a walker-filled Madison Square Garden. Set pieces take place on the Hudson and within the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and we see landmarks like Radio City Music Hall and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. New York doesn’t feel like a character as much as it should, and the full city blocks of walkers lurking below the rooftop ziplines or zombie bodies dropping from those same rooftops are missed this time around.

Another thing that’s missed: the main event of Maggie and Negan headlining their own show together. They spend far too little time together the second time around, and are kept apart for most of the first six episodes of the eight-episode season (AMC withheld the final two episodes from critics).

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live and The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol also had their respective co-leads — Andrew Lincoln’s Rick and Danai Gurira’s Michonne, and Norman Reedus’ Daryl and Melissa McBride’s Carol — embark on their own individual journeys before being brought together, but by keeping Maggie and Negan in their corners except for the briefest of exchanges, Dead City loses its hook of pairing off Maggie with the since-reformed man who murdered her husband Glenn (Steven Yeun).

Glenn goes unmentioned by name (except for being referred to as Hershel’s dad), which fans are sure to be disappointed to learn after last season had Maggie relive the horror of his death in The Walking Dead‘s brains-bashing Season 7 premiere. (To be fair, Dead City takes place some 17 years later.) This time around, Maggie shares most of her screen time with Hershel, who still harbors anger and resentment towards his mother for what he calls an “obsession” with Negan. I don’t quite buy that Maggie’s hatred for Negan overshadows her love for Hershel, although that’s how he feels — something that is repeatedly stated in the few times Maggie tries to get her resentful and distant son to open up and close what seems to be a chasm between them. Complicating matters is Hershel’s complex attitude toward the Dama, and Maggie’s complex relationship with Negan: namely her feelings of guilt for handing him over to the Dama, and how, understandably, her holding onto this vendetta has affected and poisoned her relationship with her son. Cohan gets to play a different side of Maggie, at times the ferocious “mama bear” and at other times a mom wracked with guilt and wrestling with this schism that brings out shocking sides of her son.

Dead City is at its best when Cohan and Morgan are unpacking the grief and guilt that has intertwined Maggie and Negan’s stories together to the point that the series perks up any time they’re sharing the same space — whether that’s as frenemies or foes. Like methane, that kind of electricity can power an entire city.

Rating: 3 out of 5

The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 premieres Sunday, May 4th, at 9 p.m. ET on AMC and AMC+.

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Robert Kirkman has described The Walking Dead as the zombie movie that never ends. “I’ve always loved zombie movies but I hated how they ended, and so I wanted to do the zombie movie that never ends,” the creator explained in 2016. “I think watching people survive over a long period of time, finding food, making relationships, trying to maintain those relationships in the face of a zombie apocalypse would be something that would be fun to explore as a storyteller for many, many, many years.”

But after 16 years and 193 issues, Kirkman’s long-running Image comic series concluded in 2019. The twist: no one saw the ending coming. Only upon reaching the final page of The Walking Dead #193 did readers learn that the story being told since 2003 was over.

Kirkman told readers at the time that the sudden ending, which came without warning or fanfare, was because The Walking Dead “has always been built on surprise,” whether that was a sudden death that happened at the last minute or a page-turning shocker that left jaws agape.

AMC’s live-action adaptation of Kirkman’s zombie comic concluded not long after, ending its 11-season, 177-episode run in 2022 and transitioning to spinoffs like Dead City, Daryl Dixon, and The Ones Who Live. But like any good zombie movie, the original series had a horde of plot twists and shockers, some adapted from the comic book and others that caught even comic readers off guard. We’ve ranked some of those twists below (beware of spoilers).

10. Jadis and the Scavengers Betray Alexandria

After a half season of lead up to all-out war against Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and the Saviors, it seemed Alexandria found allies in their fight: Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) and the junkyard dwelling Scavengers.

The group spent most of season 7 forming alliances with other subjugated communities like the Kingdom and Oceanside, and convinced the Scavengers to rebel against Negan in exchange for guns. But when the Saviors arrived at Alexandria in the season 7 finale, “The First Day of the Rest of Your Life,” Jadis and the Scavengers double-crossed the group as they sided with Negan, leading to all-out war between the Saviors and Scavengers against the allied Alexandria, the Hilltop, and the Kingdom.

9. Dante Is a Whisperer

In another betrayal, the season 10 episode “Open Your Eyes” revealed that Dante (Juan Javier Cardenas) — a character who was once Maggie’s love interest in the comic books — was a Whisperer spy sent to infiltrate and sabotage Alexandria.

Not only had Dante befriended Alexandria doctor Siddiq (Avi Nash), but he was one of the skin-wearing Whisperers who had left Siddiq traumatized after he was forced to watch the beheadings carried out by Samantha Morton’s Alpha (more on that below). Once found out, Dante strangled Siddiq to death.

8. Rick’s Secret

It was one of the most asked questions of The Walking Dead‘s early seasons: What did Jenner whisper to Rick? When Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) led his group of survivors to the CDC in Atlanta, virologist Dr. Edwin Jenner (Noah Emmerich) whispered something in Rick’s ear in the “TS-19” season 1 finale. It would be over a year and another 13 episodes before viewers learned the secret Rick was keeping.

“We’re all infected,” Rick told the others after Randall (Michael Zegen) was found to have turned without being bit. “At the CDC, Jenner told me. Whatever it is, we all carry it.” Rick confirmed this when he was forced to kill Shane (Jon Bernthal), who then reanimated after being stabbed to death.

7. Carol Killed Karen and David

The comic revealed that a serial killer was among the inmates of the prison seized by Rick’s group, a plot thread that almost made it into the show. Instead, the season 4 episode “Infected” ended with a shocking discovery: Tyreese (Chad Coleman) found his girlfriend Karen (Melissa Ponzio) and friend David’s (Brandon Carroll) charred corpses.

Karen and David were quarantined with the flu virus that had begin to spread throughout the prison, so Carol (Melissa McBride) took it upon herself to prevent further infection by killing Karen and David. Carol was meek and unassuming, making it that more surprising that she could do something so cold blooded — even if she had started to come into her own after the events of season 2 (more on that below).

6. Terminus Cannibals

After the Governor’s (David Morrissey) assault left the prison in ruins in the midseason 4 finale “Too Far Gone,” the back half of season 4 saw the survivors separated. All roads led to Terminus, which had broadcast a message: “Sanctuary for all. Community for all. Those who arrive survive.”

When the groups eventually converged at Terminus, Rick, Carl (Chandler Riggs), Michonne (Danai Gurira), and Daryl (Norman Reedus) arrived to find the others had been rounded up like cattle into a boxcar. It was then revealed that Gareth’s (Andrew J. West) Termites were cannibals who would lure people to Terminus for slaughter. The season 5 episode “No Sanctuary” was as shockingly violent as it was ruthless, especially when Carol launched a one-woman attack on Terminus to save her friends before they could be slaughtered and eaten.

5. Eugene’s Lie

Later in season 5, the displaced group had a new direction when the cowardly Eugene (Josh McDermitt) claimed to have a cure for the walker apocalypse. Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) and Rosita (Christian Serratos) were escorting Eugene to Washington, D.C., on a mission to save humanity, with Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Glenn (Steven Yeun) eventually joining them alongside Tara (Alanna Masterson).

But while en route to D.C. in the season 5 episode “Self Help,” Eugene confessed: “I’m not a scientist. I lied. I don’t know how to stop it.” Eugene believed that Washington was the most probable place for survival, so Eugene duped people stronger and more capable than him to shepherd him to safety. Still, with the group out of options, they headed to D.C. and eventually ended up at the Alexandria community in Virginia.

4. The Pikes

Lines were crossed during the Whisperer War. “The Calm Before,” the penultimate episode of season 9, ended with Daryl, Carol, Michonne, Siddiq, and Yukio (Eleanor Matsuura) at Alpha’s border marking Whisperer territory. Meanwhile, back at the Kingdom’s Fair of New Beginnings, dread set in as people went missing.

At the border, the group found the decapitated heads of 10 victims gruesomely displayed on pikes, including Tara, Enid (Katelyn Nacon), and, most shockingly, Carol’s adopted son Henry (Matt Lintz).

3. Eeny Meeny Miny More

The season 6 finale, “Last Day on Earth,” ended with Rick captured by Negan’s Saviors. In a season-ending cliffhanger, Negan introduced himself and played a game of eeny, meeny, miny, moe to pick the victim whose head he would bash in with his barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat, Lucille.

The lineup: Rick, Carl, Michonne, Daryl, Maggie, Glenn, Rosita, Abraham, Eugene, Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green), and Aaron (Ross Marquand). Although the episode left off with a death by baseball bat, Negan’s victim wasn’t revealed until “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be” season 7 premiere. Negan bludgeoned Abraham to death, and just when Glenn seemed to be spared his comic book fate from The Walking Dead issue #100, Negan took a second victim when he pulverized Glenn’s head into bloody mush.

2. Sophia In the Barn

In the season 2 opener, “What Lies Ahead,” Carol’s daughter Sophia (Madison Lintz) ran away from a highway walker horde and went missing. The group posted up at the Greene family farm and spent the first half of season 2 searching for Sophia, who would finally be found in the “Pretty Much Dead” midseason finale.

Despite holding out hope that the girl was alive, the group was shocked when a zombified Sophia — who had died and turned from a walker’s bite — shambled out of the barn with the dozens of other walkers wrangled up by Otis (Pruitt Taylor Vince) at a time that Hershel (Scott Wilson) believed they could be cured. Rick then stepped forth and shot Sophia in the head to put her down.

1. Carl’s Death

In the season 8 episode “How It’s Gotta Be,” Carl revealed to Rick and Michonne that he was bitten by a walker episodes earlier (in “The King, the Widow, and Rick”) while saving Siddiq.

It was the biggest deviation from the comic book, where Carl lived well into a 25-year time jump and survived the series. Carl’s death in season 8’s “Honor” midseason premiere is a twist that shocked not just TV viewers, but comic book readers, who believed Carl was as “safe” as someone could be in the twist-filled world of The Walking Dead.

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Zombies may shamble slowly, but the questions they leave behind move at lightning speed. Despite wrapping up its main storyline after eleven blood-soaked seasons, The Walking Dead universe continues expanding through multiple spinoffs that follow beloved characters across different corners of the post-apocalyptic landscape. From Daryl’s adventures in France on The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon to Rick and Michonne’s reunion in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, these extensions of the franchise keep fans hooked while introducing fresh landscapes, characters, and threats. Yet, for all the new ground covered, numerous head-scratching mysteries from the original series remain buried deeper than a walker in quicksand.

The sprawling zombie saga has spawned countless theories among its dedicated fanbase, with viewers dissecting every episode for clues about the world’s most pressing questions. As the franchise balances nostalgia for long-standing characters with exciting new directions, certain fundamental puzzles stay frustratingly unsolved. Whether these mysteries will eventually find resolution in future spinoffs or remain permanently in the dark remains unknown, much like the fate of humanity itself in this walker-infested world. Here are the seven most significant Walking Dead mysteries that continue to lurk in the shadows, haunting fans long after the main series concluded.

What Happened to Other International Communities?

While most of The Walking Dead‘s action unfolds across America’s post-apocalyptic landscape, Daryl Dixon’s European adventures opened fans’ eyes to how differently other regions might experience the zombie outbreak. France’s walker variants exhibited disturbing new capabilities, suggesting the virus manifests uniquely worldwide.

This global perspective presents enticing storytelling possibilities that remain largely unexplored. Have certain nations fared better than others based on geography, population density, or cultural approaches to crisis? Could isolated communities on islands or in remote mountain regions have maintained functioning societies? The appearance of different walker types in France hints at potentially fascinating variations elsewhere—perhaps faster zombies in some regions, completely immobile ones in others, or even communities that found effective containment methods.

The international mystery grows more compelling when considering how pre-apocalypse relationships between countries might have evolved. Did any governments survive long enough to establish communication networks? Did military powers attempt coordinated responses? With the Commonwealth and Civic Republic Military demonstrating that large-scale organizations survived in America, fans wonder what equivalent powers might exist across oceans, waiting to be discovered.

Will Rick and Daryl Ever Reunite?

The brotherhood between Rick Grimes and Daryl Dixon formed the emotional foundation of The Walking Dead’s early seasons. Their separation following Rick’s helicopter departure in Season 9 created one of the franchise’s most anticipated potential reunions—a moment fans have waited years to witness.

While The Ones Who Live finally brought Rick back to the screen and reunited him with Michonne, his reunion with Daryl—his most trusted lieutenant—remains unfulfilled. Norman Reedus has publicly expressed interest in making this reunion happen, though coordinating between separate spinoffs presents logistical challenges. The emotional weight of such a meeting would be tremendous, especially considering Daryl never stopped searching for Rick and continues wearing his gun as a reminder of their bond.

With Daryl currently traversing France and England while Rick has returned to America, the geographic distance between them seems insurmountable. However, given the franchise’s love for dramatic reunions and the central importance of this relationship, many believe the showrunners must eventually bring these blood brothers back together, possibly in a future crossover event that could serve as a capstone for both characters’ journeys.

How Many Years Have Passed Since the Original Outbreak?

The timeline across The Walking Dead franchise has become increasingly muddled, especially with various spinoffs operating at different points in the apocalypse. While Fear The Walking Dead began showing the early outbreak days, spinoffs like The Walking Dead: Dead City and Daryl Dixon occur well after the main series’ conclusion.

This chronological confusion leaves viewers struggling to understand how much time has passed since the world fell. Has a decade gone by? Fifteen years? The answer affects our understanding of character development, environmental changes, and technological degradation. Without a clear timeline, it’s difficult to appreciate how communities have evolved or how nature has reclaimed urban areas.

The temporal question becomes particularly relevant when considering how children like Judith and Hershel Jr. have grown up knowing only this dangerous world. Their perspectives on society would differ dramatically depending on whether they’ve lived through five years of apocalypse versus fifteen. Similarly, the decay rate of infrastructure and supplies—from collapsing buildings to spoiled gasoline—should reflect an accurate passage of time to maintain the world’s internal logic.

[RELATED – 10 Best Episodes of The Walking Dead]

Can The CRM Actually Be Defeated?

The Civic Republic Military emerged as the most formidable human antagonist in The Walking Dead universe, first introduced in the main series and further explored in World Beyond and The Ones Who Live. This militaristic organization possesses resources, technology, and manpower far exceeding any community previously seen.

The question of whether the CRM can be—or should be—defeated raises fascinating possibilities for future storytelling. While Rick and Michonne confronted aspects of the organization in The Ones Who Live, the CRM largely remains intact. As a potential overarching villain for the entire franchise, the CRM’s ultimate fate could become a unifying thread across multiple spinoffs.

What makes this mystery particularly compelling is the CRM’s moral ambiguity. Unlike purely malevolent antagonists like the Governor or Negan, the CRM genuinely believes its authoritarian methods are necessary for humanity’s survival. Their advanced resources might hold the keys to understanding or addressing the walker virus itself, making their complete destruction potentially catastrophic for humanity’s future. This ethical complexity elevates the CRM mystery beyond simple questions of victory or defeat.

What’s Laurent’s True Connection to Walkers?

Daryl Dixon introduced Laurent, a young boy with an apparent special connection to walkers that sometimes causes them to respond differently to him than to other humans. Throughout the first season, this mysterious bond raised significant questions about the nature of the walker virus and its evolution.

Is Laurent somehow immune? Does he represent a potential key to understanding or even curing the virus? As Daryl Dixon continues with its third season, exploring Laurent’s true nature could provide new insights into the fundamental mechanics of the franchise’s central threat. However, with Laurent now sent to America while Daryl and Carol venture through England, this storyline appears temporarily shelved.

Laurent’s connection to walkers represents one of the most intriguing additions to the franchise’s mythology in years. If he truly possesses unique biological characteristics, he could become central to the entire Walking Dead universe’s future. Yet with his story currently paused, fans must wait to discover whether his abilities represent a genuine evolutionary development or merely coincidental behavior from the undead.

Will There Ever Be a Cure for the Walker Virus?

The possibility of a cure has been raised throughout the franchise, from Eugene’s initial false claims to the scientific research conducted by the CRM and other groups. World Beyond reintroduced this concept through its focus on research facilities working on the virus, while more recent developments with Laurent suggest potential immunological breakthroughs.

A cure would fundamentally transform The Walking Dead’s world, potentially allowing for the restoration of society as it existed before the outbreak. This raises narrative questions about whether the franchise would embrace such a dramatic shift or continue focusing on survival in a world where the dead walk. The development of a cure would create new conflicts regarding who deserves access and how it would be distributed in a fractured world.

The cure question ultimately represents the most optimistic thread in an otherwise bleak universe. While early seasons focused purely on survival, later storylines increasingly suggest humanity might someday overcome the apocalypse rather than merely endure it. Whether this hope materializes or proves, another cruel disappointment remains one of the franchise’s most significant unresolved mysteries.

How Did the Virus Actually Begin?

The origin of the walker virus remains the biggest mystery in The Walking Dead universe. World Beyond provided some hints through its post-credits scene featuring a French research facility but stopped short of confirming the initial cause. This scene suggested French scientists may have been responsible for creating or accelerating variants of the walker virus.

Understanding how the apocalypse began would provide critical context for the entire franchise. Was it a natural mutation, a bioweapon, or something entirely different? The show has teased connections to research facilities and government organizations like the CRM but has yet to provide definitive answers. For a series that has explored nearly every aspect of post-apocalyptic survival, this foundational question remains surprisingly unresolved.

The origin mystery carries philosophical weight beyond mere curiosity. If the virus resulted from human experimentation, it frames the apocalypse as a cautionary tale about scientific overreach. If it emerged naturally, it suggests humanity’s inherent fragility against nature’s forces. The answer would fundamentally shape how viewers interpret the show’s themes about civilization, human nature, and our capacity for both destruction and resilience in the face of catastrophe—making it the Walking Dead’s most profound unanswered question.

What unanswered The Walking Dead questions do you still have? Let us know in the comments below!

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Considered one of TV’s best villains (and worst, considering all his deeds), as soon as he appeared on The Walking Dead, Negan was the kind of character who made it clear what he was there for. To this day, he’s remembered as a powerful presence, even though, after the series ended, he embarked on a redemption arc alongside Maggie in the spinoff The Walking Dead: Dead City. And yes, Jeffrey Dean Morgan turned out to be the perfect choice. It’s difficult to think of Negan without immediately picturing him, however, he had a strong competitor, and it was this close to being a different actor carrying the legacy of one of The Walking Dead‘s most iconic antagonists.

Morgan wasn’t exactly the go-to choice from the start. In fact, the actor who almost got the role had already made a name for himself back in 1996 – and once you know who it is, it makes a lot of sense.

Matthew Lillard is a fan-favorite actor, known for roles like the fun-loving Shaggy in the live-action Scooby-Doo films, the eerie Steve Raglan/William Afton in Five Nights at Freddy’s, and, of course, the unhinged killer Stu Macher in Scream. There’s no official confirmation that his performance as one of the Ghostfaces is what caught The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman’s and the production’s attention, but it wouldn’t be surprising. After all, both Negan and Stu share a menacing energy. So, how did this almost happen – and why did the role ultimately go to Morgan?

When casting began for Season 7, the production team needed someone who could fully embody the intensity of Negan – a character who blends brutality, charisma, and a warped sense of morality. That’s when Lillard’s name entered the conversation, alongside other contenders like Timothy Olyphant, Garret Dillahunt, and Matt Dillon. He auditioned, delivering a performance that showcased impressive range – shifting from the playful tone he’s known for to the darker and more menacing energy required for Negan.

[RELATED: The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 Trailer Shocks With Old Negan, New Villains]

During a Scream panel at Atlanta’s Walker Stalker Con in 2022, he spoke more about the experience.

“So I got a call. They said they want you to audition for The Walking Dead. It’s a big part. I’m like, ‘Okay, cool.’ I didn’t watch the show, sorry. So I went in to audition and they loved it. They were like, ‘Wow, they really loved it, you’re in the running for this part.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s great. It usually means it’s going to somebody else,'” Lillard shared. But even though he wasn’t very confident about the outcome, he was called back for a second round – this time to do a more dramatically staged reading. That’s when he was told the role had come down to him and one other actor – Morgan.

According to the actor, his performance genuinely surprised the casting team. However, after further discussions and evaluation, the producers ultimately offered the part to Morgan, who brought a fiercer energy, a distinct presence, and a portrayal that captured all the complexity of Negan’s moral ambiguity. If audiences were able to be both captivated by and afraid of the villain, it was largely thanks to the nuance Morgan brought to the role. Still, imagining Lillard in that position raises curiosity – it could’ve marked a major turning point in his career.

Interestingly, The Walking Dead‘s creator seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of Shaggy’s actor taking on the role. At the same event, Lillard shared that Kirkman had personally spoken to him – and later admitted that when he saw Morgan’s face on the show’s merchandise, he felt it should’ve been Lillard’s. Kirkman was clearly rooting for him, but in the end, it just wasn’t enough.

Even so, not landing the role didn’t hold Lillard back. His career has continued to flourish in a variety of genres, and that versatility is a big reason why audiences still admire him so much. It’s fascinating to know he was seriously considered for such a complex character, but at the same time, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to avoid the downsides of playing someone like Negan. Morgan himself has shared that even years after the infamous episode where a beloved character was killed by Lucille, he still faces backlash from fans upset with what his character did. Portraying someone as deeply villainous as Negan can be unforgettable – but it definitely comes at a cost.

The Walking Dead is available to stream on Netflix.

The post The Walking Dead’s Negan Was Almost Played by a Fan-Favorite Scooby-Doo Star appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Fortnite has announced a major collaboration with The Walking Dead, and it will bring one of the biggest characters in the franchise to the game. Following previous additions like Rick Grimes, it was revealed this morning that Negan will be added on April 4th. The announcement was part of a much bigger promotion connected to the universe of The Walking Dead. Starting today, players will be able to create their own islands in Fortnite Creative using content and assets based on the brand. Players will be able to find special “The Walking Dead Universe” templates, and use them to build unique experiences.

The templates will give players various options to choose from, including Walker NPCs. As in the comic and AMC series, Walkers will be slow and shambling, but particularly dangerous in hordes. Players that find themselves bitten by a Walker will slowly lose health until their demise. Starting on April 8th, there will be an option to add Negan as an NPC, as well. Players can also fill their creations with other iconic elements from The Walking Dead, including weapons like Negan’s bat Lucille. The prison is one of the most iconic locations from The Walking Dead, and it’s also being represented in a big way through Fortnite Creative options. There will even be a shader tool that gives creations a black and white color to match the comic series! A trailer for the collaboration can be found below.

While Fortnite players can start building islands today using content from The Walking Dead, these options cannot be published in the creator portal until May 16th. That should give players some nice lead time to come up with unique concepts. In a press release, The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman talked about the collaboration with Epic Games, while sharing his excitement about seeing what players come up with through Fortnite Creative.

“This collaboration with Fortnite is an incredible opportunity to expand The Walking Dead in ways we’ve never imagined. Whether it’s Lucille smashing through hordes or the eerie presence of Walkers, I can’t wait to see where the Fortnite community’s creativity takes us,” said Kirkman.

RELATED: Fortnite Leak Reveals Next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Skins

Once players are able to start sharing their creations, it’s going to be interesting to see what experiences they come up with. The Walking Dead IP seems like a really interesting option for Fortnite Creative, and it looks like Epic Games has come up with several tools that make sense for the brand. Of course, those that prefer Walking Dead skins in the traditional Fortnite game will soon have one of the franchise’s most iconic characters to choose from. There are still some pretty notable character skins that have yet to appear, so hopefully Negan’s arrival means that we’ll see even more in the future.

Are you looking forward to any of this content in Fortnite? What skins based on The Walking Dead do you still want to see? Share your thoughts with me directly on Bluesky at @Marcdachamp, or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!

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It’s pretty tough for a TV show to make major waves in the pop culture zeitgeist. But back in 2010, some series really showed what they were made of, breaking records and getting audiences to wait every week for a new episode. The Walking Dead definitely made that list, pulling in a massive 5.3 million viewers in its pilot episode alone. But as time went on, things changed, with lots of ups and downs. The Walking Dead Season 2 is a perfect example of this, with a pretty messy story, but luckily it managed to turn things around just in time. The big question is: What happened?

The second batch of episodes of The Walking Dead is still remembered by many as one of the slowest in the series. The lethargic pace, the repetition of scenes, and the lack of big events left fans frustrated (even though the last few episodes got better in some ways). What a lot of The Walking Dead fans may not know is that all these issues were just a reflection of a much bigger problem behind the scenes – from creative clashes to messed-up behavior, everything was in chaos.

The Walking Dead‘s Behind-the-Scenes Problems

When The Walking Dead started, acclaimed filmmaker Frank Darabont was in charge of production. The showrunner was also a co-creator of the series, playing a huge role in its early success. Thanks to him, the episodes had an ambitious cinematic style that set the dark and realistic tone for a plot centered around a post-apocalyptic world. However, when season 2 kicked off, Darabont was unexpectedly fired by AMC. The reason? Clashes between his creative vision and the network’s demands, budget cuts, and, as later revealed in court documents (after the situation led to a lawsuit), his alleged abusive behavior behind the scenes.

As Darabont sued AMC, emails were leaked that contradicted his story, showing that he regularly insulted and verbally attacked members of his team. He also expressed frustration over things happening on set. “F—k you all for giving me chest pains because of the staggering f—ing incompetence, blindness to the important beats, and the beyond-arrogant lack of regard for what is written being exhibited on set every day,” Darabont said, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. “I deserve better than a heart attack because people are too stupid to read a script and understand the words. Does anybody disagree with me? Then join the C-cam operator and go find another job that doesn’t involve deliberately f—ing up my show scene by scene.”

The showrunner claimed that he was unfairly removed from the series and excluded from profits. The heart of the problem was accusations of creative accounting (a practice in which studios manipulate figures to make it appear that a production is less profitable than it is to avoid paying profit-sharing). The calculation model was later revised, but Darabont continued his fight for fair compensation.

[RELATED: How to Watch All The Walking Dead Shows in Order in 2025]

However, surprisingly, not all of his actions were entirely unfounded. After the success of Season 1, AMC decided to cut The Walking Dead‘s budget by 25% for the new episodes despite ordering a second season with 16 episodes (up from just six). This naturally led to production disagreements. There were fewer locations, fewer action scenes, and fewer zombies on screen. That’s why most of The Walking Dead Season 2 takes place on Hershel’s farm, with fewer sequences full of tension and danger – the very elements that had garnered the audience’s positive feedback. Financial constraints also affected the special effects.

But the plot wasn’t the only issue. There was a huge problem in the writer’s room. Reports indicated that Darabont was already planning to fire the entire writing staff and work only with freelancers. The result? More instability behind the scenes. He eventually left the series, but the challenges didn’t end. The writing team had to be quickly replaced, and AMC had to reorganize the staff in a hurry with Glen Mazzara assuming showrunner duties for Seasons 2 and 3.

With the pressure to launch Season 2, The Walking Dead‘s story moved at a slower pace than before, with long sequences of characters dealing with their moral dilemmas. The plot didn’t progress because there was no one left to drive and maintain the intense pace of Season 1. Plus, AMC required that all scripts be approved before filming began. This caused strong viewer criticism, and to this day, the season is considered one of the worst and most disorganized of the series. For a show whose main draw was the zombie apocalypse, this shift didn’t sit well with the audience. Fans expected more threats and confrontations, but everything became too monotonous.

Season 2 Reception Was Really Negative

In Season 2 of The Walking Dead, after the destruction of the Center for Disease Control, Rick and his group set out to find a new refuge and come across the isolated farm of the Greene family. As they try to adapt to their new life, they face both internal and external challenges, including leadership conflicts between Rick and Shane, as well as the search for Carol’s daughter, Sophia. Eventually, the girl is turned into a zombie and discovered in the farm’s barn. The story culminates with the place being overrun by a horde of the undead, forcing the group to flee.

The plot was basically split into a slower section and a faster one (though that only happened at the very end). Despite the script undergoing constant changes in an attempt to match the pace and balance of Season 1, some argue that the creativity in the second half of the season wasn’t as strong. As a result, the reception was affected, with many viewers feeling the plot had stalled and interest gradually waned. Though the series still maintained strong ratings, it was essentially a wake-up call.

Fortunately, The Walking Dead managed to bounce back in Season 3, reintroducing the tension and action that originally won over the audience. However, the turbulence of Season 2 will always be remembered as one of the most troubled times for the series – even though the rhythm returned with ups and downs starting from Season 7.

The Walking Dead is available to stream on Netflix.

The post There’s a Reason The Walking Dead Season 2 Is So Messy appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The city that never sleeps is coming back to life. In the new trailer for The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2, which AMC released Thursday, Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan holds court in a display of literal power. The Croat’s (Željko Ivanek) Burazi have restored power to the long-dormant and darkened island of Manhattan, using its most abundant natural resource — the dead — to generate electricity. (People are a resource, after all.)

“You see, power equals power,” Negan tells the gangs of New York gathered in a brightly-lit room. “So if you ain’t with us, I guess you’re in for a bit of a shock.” That shock felt by the electrified barbed wire wrapped around Negan’s beloved baseball bat, Lucille, is less shocking than what follows: Maggie (Lauren Cohan) holding the weapon that was used to bludgeon her husband Glenn to death.

Watch the just-released trailer below.

RELATED: How to Watch All The Walking Dead Shows in Order

Elsewhere in the trailer, Maggie has her own weapon of choice: a bladed arm gauntlet she’s seen wielding to fend off attacks from the dead, the living, and a very alive bear.

After Negan and Maggie made the trek into Manhattan to rescue her son, Hershel (Logan Kim), after he was kidnapped by the Croat, Maggie gets New Babylon Federation Marshal Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles) to help her mount another rescue mission: saving Negan from the clutches of the mysterious power dealer Dama (Lisa Emery).

“We know what it means to go back there,” Maggie says of the rescue mission joined by Hershel. The Dama used Hershel to get to Negan and then got Negan to do her bidding by threatening Maggie’s son, who has his own motives for returning to the city.

RELATED: The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 1 Ending, Explained

Meanwhile, a new player, rival gang leader Bruegel (Sons of Anarchy‘s Kim Coates), can be seen presiding over a gathering of the gangs in a Last Supper-style shot as he dares “any mainlander to set foot on this island.” Challenge accepted.

Here’s the official description: “In the growing war for control of New York City, Maggie and Negan find themselves trapped on opposite sides. As their paths intertwine, they come to see that the way out for both is more complicated and harrowing than they ever imagined.”

The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 — which stars Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Gaius Charles, Željko Ivanek, Mahina Anne Marie Napoleon, Lisa Emery, Logan
Kim, Dascha Polanco and Kim Coates — premieres Sunday, May 4 at 9:00 pm ET on AMC and AMC+.

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When I was a little kid, I used to be extremely particular about water. Whether it was my bathwater or the drinking water that mom poured into my favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cup, it always needed to be just right. As I got older, I became less tyrannical about the water around me, but I still have my preferences. But it’s a big reason as to why this one specific walker from The Walking Dead still gives me nightmares. From the set up, you can probably already guess which walker I’m talking about. Out of the thousands of walkers featured across over 170 episodes in The Walking Dead, the bloated well walker from “Cherokee Rose” is the one that has stuck with me after all of these years.

Before I dive into the reasons why this disgusting walker has been forever burned into my mind, I should mention that The Walking Dead has featured some pretty iconic creature designs throughout its 11-season run. Straight out of the gate, we were introduced to Summer (Addy Miller), the little walker girl clutching her teddy bear. With her jaw nearly completely ripped off, viewers quickly got a sense of the kind of show that they were about to watch. After that, we’ve seen impactful nightmare-inducing walkers such as the lone walker that Shane sees in “Better Angels,” Michonne’s (Danai Gurira) jawless, armless walker companions, and the gluttonous walker that snacked on Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) in “Say the Word.” But to me, it’s still the bloated walker that takes the crown.

Using Up One of Glenn’s Nine Lives

As Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and the rest of his ragtag group of survivors settled in on the Greene Family Farm, it became clear that many of the characters started to become a little too comfortable with the new reality that they found themselves in. One of those characters was Glenn (Steven Yeun), who was volunteered to fix a very serious problem that jeopardized the farm. A walker had somehow made its way on the farm and managed to tumble down into a well on the property.

With safety concerns over the cleanliness of the water inside the well, the group decides that the best course of action is to pull the walker out of the well without killing it first. At this point in the story, I was already checked out. There no way you could convince me that the water in that well wasn’t already contaminated by that disgusting bloated walker. I would gladly take the dehydration over a cool and refreshing glass of walker-ade, but I digress. So instead of shooting the walker and then fishing it out, the group ties up Glenn and lowers him down to tie up the walker.

In classic The Walking Dead fashion, things don’t go according to plan and Glenn comes dangerously close to becoming a walker himself. But after a brief struggle, he wraps the rope around the walker before he is lifted to safety. Despite Glenn accomplishing his mission, the plan to lift the bloated well walker out hits a gory and stomach-turning snag when the walker is ripped in half by the rope. Its blood and guts then spill into the water, rendering the entire supply useless. Just perfect. Not to mention that this stunt cost Glenn one of his nine lives that he could have used during an encounter with Negan.

[RELATED: How to Watch All The Walking Dead Shows in Order in 2025]

Cutting Out the Bloat

Again, even before the bloated well walker was spliced in half, that well water was beyond saving. Nobody on that farm could determine when that walker fell inside that well. Just looking at that nightmare inducing walker, that thing could have been in there for weeks or even months, just steeping in that water like a soggy and puss-filled tea bag. At that point, was it even worth the risk? Even if their original plan worked and they fished that walker out of the well without spilling a drop of blood, there is no telling which bodily fluids oozed into the water. I don’t care how many times you might boil the water, there’s no killing that level of disgusting.

Maybe I’m just being unreasonable. In The Walking Dead universe, sometimes you just have to make sacrifices and go well beyond your comfort zone in order to survive. If that means possibly getting micro-dosed with a virus that can turn you into a walker, then so be it. But then again … no. There is no way in a million years I would have ever taken that chance. You can collect rainwater, you can trap condensation, you can scavenge nearby areas for bottles of water. Any of those options are better than scooping a moldy potato walker out of a well and then drinking that well water like nothing happened. Just thinking about it gives me nightmares.

Which walker do you think is the most nightmare inducing on The Walking Dead?

The post I Still Have Nightmares About This Walker From The Walking Dead appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Invincible Season 3 is now getting ready for its grand finale, and the star behind its newest debut Conquest has opened up about the mini The Walking Dead reunion that’s popped up in the animated series. Invincible’s third season has really put Mark Grayson through all kinds of hell as following his fight with Angstrom Levy at the end of the second season, he’s only been dealing with even more troubles than before. Now as the third season comes to an end, Mark now has one final opponent that’s standing in his way that could ruin everything he’s fought for.

Invincible Season 3 Episode 7 took things to its limits as Angstrom Levy summoned a group of Marks from across the multiverse to destroy the Earth and ruin Mark’s image with the public, and Mark did everything he could to take down his most ruthless foe. But as the Earth tries to recover from all the devastation that’s sparked as a result, a deadly new Viltrumite named Conquest has made his way to the planet and ready to take it over. Voiced by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the Walking Dead star addressed his mini reunion with Steven Yeun in the animated series.

The Walking Dead’s Negan Joins Invincible as Conquest

When it came to joining Invincible as Conquest, series creator Robert Kirkman noted in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly how he’s been thinking of Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the voice of the Viltrumite, “probably since the beginning of the show’s existence….” Explaining that “Conquest needs a lot of nuance. There’s a tremendous amount of personality there, even though he is this giant, powerful brute that’s just wrecking things. And I knew Jeffrey could bring that.” When it comes to Morgan himself, the star noted how physically exhausting it is.

“I don’t know what it is about being in a [recording] booth and trying to destroy the world,” Morgan stated, “but it’s really physically hard.” As for his mini-reunion with fellow Walking Dead star Yeun, “I was just thrilled to get to be a part of it and give Steven his chance at redemption,” Morgan joked. But at the same time, he’s very aware of how differently of a picture he wants to paint for Conquest as opposed to his famous portrayal of The Walking Dead’s Negan, “I was trying to be aware of just voice inflection. It’s so easy for me to get into Negan mode after this many years.”

RELATED: Invincible Creator Shares Season 4 Update Ahead of Season 3 Finale

What’s Next for Conquest?

But as Invincible Season 3 comes to an end, Kirkman teases just how bad things have gotten for Mark, “At the end of 307, Mark is at his absolute lowest,” Kirkman began. “He has seen other versions of himself decimate the planet. Everyone is turned against him. He is participating in the rebuilding effort, but he feels more guilt than he has ever felt in his life.”

As for Conquest’s arrival, he’s only going to make things worse for Mark from here on out, “And Conquest shows up. So he’s in this unique head space.He’s backed into a corner. The world is already in shambles, and Cecil calls [Conquest] ‘Mr. 10 Times Worse.’ We’ve been hinting at this character’s arrival since season 2, when Anissa warned that he was going to be coming, and now he’s here. So it’s going to get even worse somehow.”

Now that conquest is finally here, it’s time for fans to see what this villains is really about as Invincible Season 3 comes to an end.

HT – EW

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About fifteen years ago, AMC’s The Walking Dead became a regular fixture of many fan’s daily lives. It was one of the most iconic shows of all time and nearly as impactful as Game of Thrones – it was impossible to not stop whatever you were doing to watch the new episode of the week. But one still stands out because it made everyone realize the new direction the show was about to take after several seasons. At some point, the plot of The Walking Dead started to focus less on the zombies and more on the post-apocalyptic world and human rivalries. It was a logical path considering everyone’s fighting for survival and anything goes. But when a new antagonist showed up, it really showed what that meant.

With 17 million people tuning in in the US alone, the season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead stopped everything in its tracks, with events that would stay with fans for a long time. Negan’s introduction was unforgettable, leaving every viewer in total shock. The problem is, for many, the response wasn’t so great, with some feeling like the show had crossed the line.

“The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be” Went Too Far for The Walking Dead

Episode 1 of Season 7 was the continuation of a very strategic cliffhanger that left The Walking Dead fans anxious. When Negan showed up with his New World Order proposal in the season 6 finale, it became clear that Rick’s group wasn’t just facing a new storyline but one of TV’s greatest villains. This is a crucial point for the show because it’s from this new enemy that fans realize anything can happen – even to the protagonist. The season finale kicks off with a game of “eeny, meeny, miny, moe” to decide which member of Rick’s group will be killed after their trip to Hilltop is stopped. However, the victim’s point of view is all that’s shown, and it’s in “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be” that the audience finds out who was killed by Neegan.

The whole episode focuses solely on this moment, building the drama and suspense. It picks up a few minutes after the mysterious death, with Rick in complete shock, forced to accompany Negan for a private chat. The sense of anguish is huge from the start, even though Rick’s been through horrific experiences, nothing seems as traumatic as the recent murder of one of his friends. It’s obvious how stunned he is despite threatening Negan, all but confirming that the victim wasn’t just a background character.

Soon after, Negan speaks to Rick in a challenging tone inside a trailer while flashbacks of emotional moments with each member of Rick’s group are shown on screen. It’s a clear way to stir up more emotion and even mentally prepare the audience for when the victim is revealed – so it could have been anyone. When you least expect it, the scene cuts back to the group kneeling, marking a final flashback, with the villain holding Lucille, his bat. After the game of chance to decide who will be killed, the weapon is aimed at Abraham, and his head is bashed until he dies. But that’s where The Walking Dead goes too far.

[RELATED: 10 Best Episodes of The Walking Dead]

The assumption was that Negan would only commit one atrocity, but the audience is caught off guard. There are a few seconds to prepare for Abraham’s death, but even then, there’s a sense of relief since Abraham had only joined the series in season 4, so fans had less time to form an emotional bond with him. Abraham being the victim didn’t seem too bad, but then Negan unexpectedly smashes Glenn’s head – a punishment for Daryl punching him.

The problem is that the violence of the moment breaks the pattern, going beyond the limits of what the series had shown before. The force of the blows are so brutal that he crushes Glenn’s skull and even pops out one of his eyes. The image is disturbing and horrifying, especially with the amount of blood. At that point, The Walking Dead no longer feels like a thriller but an explicit horror show. But it doesn’t stop there – Negan continues the attack until there’s practically nothing left of Glenn’s head, leaving a mass of bone, brain, and flesh, with the body writhing on the ground.

The Walking Dead had always been a show that spared certain details, but this time, the graphic violence was excessive, and not all viewers liked it. Some even criticized the series and gave up on the show afterward. However, there was a reason for this. The scene stayed true to the comics, aiming to deliver the same intensity and emotional impact. Greg Nicotero, the episode’s director, even talked about how difficult it was to film such brutality but emphasized that it was crucial to the show’s narrative. Still, it’s undeniable: the episode was a pivotal moment that continues to haunt The Walking Dead fans to this day.

Steven Yeun and Jeffrey Dean Morgan Shared Thoughts on the Episode

Not long after the The Walking Dead episode aired, Steven Yeun commented on the scene and his character at the 2017 Walker Stalker Con. “Maybe we did it too far. It was pretty bad but we did it and people remember it, so it’s cool,” he said. The impact of the scene is hard to absorb right away, but then comes the sadness for those who have followed the character since season 1. Glenn’s history with Maggie, leaving behind a son, and his last words, make everything even worse. However, Yeun confessed that it was great that his character had gained such a foothold that his death affected the audience so intensely.

For Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the situation was a little different, especially since playing a villain like Negan means knowing that there will always be people who can’t separate reality from fiction. A lot of time passed, and the character went in search of redemption and reconciliation with his past in the spin-off The Walking Dead: Dead City. However, the actor has admitted that he still hears fans of the series blame him.

The Walking Dead is still an iconic piece of pop culture. Even with its ups and downs over time, as the story took new directions with the departure of some much-loved characters, and its success gradually diminished. But it’s still incredible to realize how much a single episode made a mark on fans and dared to go beyond the limits of the series and change the course of the characters forever. Glenn’s death may have been devastating, but it truly was a huge turning point.

The Walking Dead is available to stream on Netflix.

The post This Episode of The Walking Dead Is When It Went Too Far appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Maggie and Negan are back in the New York groove. Two years have passed since we last saw Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s enemies-turned-allies-turned-enemies in the pitch-black concrete jungle of New York City, when they traveled together into zombie-plagued Manhattan to rescue Maggie’s son Hershel (Logan Kim). After setting a nebulous 2025 release date, AMC announced on Tuesday that The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 will premiere Sunday, May 4, at 9pm ET/PT on AMC and AMC+.

In addition to the premiere date, AMC released the opening minutes of the eight-episode season, which you can watch below.

RELATED: How to Watch All The Walking Dead Shows in Order in 2025

Set to the tune of Hello’s “New York Groove,” the first two minutes show the Burazi — the Manhattan-based gang headed by the Croat (Željko Ivanek), bankrolled by The Dama (Lisa Emery), and which recruited the leather-jacketed Negan (Morgan) for a brewing gang war — using a reinforced dump truck to collect the rotting denizens still roaming the streets.

They then feed the corpses into tanks to produce energy sourced from the island’s most abundant natural resource: death. By using the methane released as bodies break down, and then turning that gas into liquid fuel, the Croat can generate electricity — enough to turn the lights back on in the City That Never Sleeps.

According to the synopsis for Dead City season 2, “In the growing war for control of Manhattan, Maggie and Negan find themselves trapped on opposite sides. As their paths intertwine, they come to see that the way out for both is more complicated and harrowing than they ever imagined.”

Along with Cohan and Morgan reprising their roles from The Walking Dead, returning cast members include Ivanek as the Croat, Emery as The Dama, Kim as Hershel Greene, Gaius Charles as Marshal Perlie Armstrong, and Mahina Anne Marie Napoleon as Ginny. Dascha Polanco (Orange Is the New Black) has been cast as new character named Lucia Narvaez, and Kim Coates (Sons of Anarchy) as rival gang leader Bruegel.

Series creator Eli Jorné, who has been a writer and co-executive producer on The Walking Dead for multiple seasons, returns as showrunner and executive producer on the series. The executive producers are The Walking Dead Universe chief content officer Scott M. Gimple (The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live), Cohan, Morgan, Brian Bockrath (The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon), Michael Satrazemis (Fear the Walking Dead), and Colin Walsh (NOS4A2).

The Walking Dead: Dead City season 1 is streaming now on AMC+, and season 2 premieres May 4.

The post The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 Release Date Set With Electrifying First Minutes appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Over the years, Dead by Daylight has featured content based on a number of different horror properties. There has been one glaring omission however, and that’s The Walking Dead. For whatever reason, Behaviour Interactive has not been able to make it happen, despite strong demand from the fan community. There has been no greater advocate for this than an account on X/Twitter that goes by the handle “Rick Grimes for DBD.” The account has long been fighting to get the star of The Walking Dead added as a survivor in the game. The account has even called in some help from one of the stars of the AMC series.

In The Walking Dead, actor Chandler Riggs portrayed Carl, the son of Rick Grimes. Riggs has an account on Cameo, and the actor received an interesting request through the platform. The Rick Grimes for DbD account enlisted the actor to help him campaign for Rick in the game, with Carl Grimes as a Legendary skin. Not only did Riggs accept the request, he revealed in the video that he’s actually a big Dead by Daylight fan himself. According to Riggs, he’s spent “like 500 hours” on the game on PC.

Dead by Daylight fans will have to wait and see if the Cameo recording achieves its goal. However, the video has at least gotten the attention of the official Dead by Daylight X/Twitter account. The account quoted and shared the video to its 1.2 million followers, stating that “it’s always so nice to make new Dead by Daylight friends outside of The Fog.” They also thanked the Rick Grimes for DBD account for making the moment happen.

If the developers at Behaviour Interactive weren’t already aware of the demand for characters from The Walking Dead in Dead by Daylight, they certainly are now! In fact, the post sharing the video of Chandler Riggs resulted in not only increased calls for content based on the series, but many Dead by Daylight fans are now convinced that this is evidence that the collaboration is happening. For now, we’ll all have to wait and see if that pans out.

RELATED: Dead by Daylight Mobile Officially Shutting Down

While fans are currently awaiting news of a Walking Dead collaboration, they’ll have to settle for a bunch of content based on Resident Evil, instead. Earlier this month, 2v8 mode returned to the game, alongside the arrivals of The Nemesis and The Mastermind (Albert Wesker). The game also added the Raccoon City Police Department to the map rotation, and Herbs from the video game series. All in all, it’s a pretty sizable collaboration, and for fans of Resident Evil, it’s a great excuse to try Dead by Daylight for the first time. If The Walking Dead ever does get a collaboration, hopefully it gets a similar treatment!

Would you like to see content based on The Walking Dead in Dead by Daylight? Which characters would you want to see added? Share your thoughts with me directly on Bluesky at @Marcdachamp, or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!

The post The Walking Dead Star Wants Rick Grimes in Dead by Daylight appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Colman Domingo is singing the praises of Fear the Walking Dead. The two-time Oscar-nominated actor — who will compete at the 2025 Oscars in the Best Actor category for his role as John “Divine G” Whitfield in Sing Sing — revealed that he almost quit acting before he was cast as ruthless survivor Victor Strand in the Walking Dead spinoff series set at the onset of the zombie apocalypse. Domingo, who joined the first season in 2015, was the only cast member to appear in all eight seasons of the AMC zombie drama that aired its final season in 2023.

“I was a theater snob. I was like, ‘Absolutely not,'” Domingo said of his initial reaction to the series on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. His agent approached him with what was being described as “the precursor to The Walking Dead,” the record-breaking cable show adapting the Image comics by writer Robert Kirkman and artists Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard.

RELATED: How to Watch All The Walking Dead Shows in Order in 2025

“I was like, ‘What’s that?'” Domingo recalled. “They said, ‘You don’t know The Walking Dead? It’s a huge show on AMC.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t watch TV.’ And so I know I really had an attitude when she said, ‘After seeing the script, I think you would really like this.'”

“Immediately, I thought, ‘Obviously this person does not know me, because she’s going to send me some genre thing, some TV thing I’m not interested in.’ She sends me the sides, and it was fantastic,” Domingo continued. “I didn’t know TV could be like this. It was rich, it was great storytelling, and a really provocative character. I had a take on the character, so I sent that tape in without even thinking about it. And then literally a couple days later, I got an offer — just from a self tape — to be a series regular on Fear the Walking Dead.”

Created by Kirkman and original showrunner Dave Erickson, AMC launched Fear in 2015 as a companion series to The Walking Dead (then the #1 show on television among adults 18-49). At first set in Los Angeles in the earliest days of the walker apocalypse, the series also starred Kim Dickens, Cliff Curtis, Frank Dillane, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Lorenzo James Henrie and Elizabeth Rodriguez as a dysfunctional blended family who first encounter the shady Strand while escaping LA.

As the series changed locations and cast members — moving to Mexico, Texas, and Georgia, with Garret Dillahunt, Maggie Grace, Jenna Elfman, and The Walking Dead‘s Lennie James all joining the creatively rebooted show in season 4 — Domingo was there for it all, even undergoing a turn as the villain in season 7 before his redemption arc in the eighth and final season.

“[Fear the Walking Dead] literally did change my entire career,” Domingo said. “Just before that, I thought I had achieved what I was supposed to achieve, and I was kindly ready to step away from the whole industry. Things were just not progressing the way I thought that made sense. I wasn’t booking [roles], I wasn’t working, I had no access or agency, and I was entering my mid-forties. I was like, ‘I can’t sustain this. I need to get a real job.’ Or at least a job that makes sense. The life of an artist was just too rocky for me at the time, and I was trying to make a decision where I wouldn’t be bitter or hardened by this industry. I wanted to step away while I still loved it, but then Fear the Walking Dead gave me footing back in the industry in a new way.”

Following his roles in the Steven Spielberg-directed Lincoln (2012), opposite Chadwick Boseman in the Jackie Robinson biographical sports drama 42 (2013), Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013), and Ava DuVernay’s Selma (2014), Domingo went on to star with Zendaya in HBO’s Euphoria and won his first Emmy for his role as Ali. Domingo was also nominated at last year’s Oscars for his role as civil rights activist Bayard Rustin in Netflix’s Rustin.

Domingo currently voices Norman Osborn in the Marvel Animation series Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, and his upcoming projects include Edgar Wright’s Running Man remake starring Glen Powell, Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic Michael, and the Russo brothers-directed sci-fi film The Electric State starring Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt.

The post Oscar Nominee Colman Domingo Nearly Quit Acting Before Fear the Walking Dead: “It Changed My Entire Career” appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Walking Dead has always been a show ahead of its time. When it premiered in 2010, the zombie genre had been beaten into the ground but the scale and production of the series was something that hadn’t been explored before. While it was based on a comic series, it quickly built a massive cult following due to its visual effects and character-driven storylines on a cable network. Where long-running dramas like Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries ended with the streaming era in full force, The Walking Dead remained.

Because of that, AMC produced 11 seasons of the show that spawned several spinoffs. Those include Dead City, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, The Ones Who Live, Fear the Walking Dead, and The Walking Dead: World Beyond. With 177 episodes, it’s hard to choose the “best” among them, however, there are ones that have a lasting cultural impact.

“The Killer Within” – Season 3, Episode 4

As opposed to some of the other deaths on the show and on this list, Lori’s was particularly heartbreaking. After maneuvering through the apocalypse nine months pregnant, she was forced to have a life-threatening Caesarian in the middle of a hoard of walkers. With her fate sealed in order to save her unborn child, she says her goodbyes to Carl, “You’re the best thing I ever did.”

While she bleeds out, Judith is born. As if this wasn’t emotionally taxing enough on poor Carl, he must shoot his mom in the head to prevent her from reanimating.

“18 Miles Out” – Season 2, Episode 10

Rick and Shane’s relationship transforms a lot in the first two seasons. By the middle of Season 2, they’ve reached a tipping point. By then we know Lori was having an affair with Shane. When he pops back up, Shane uses this secret as “leverage” which makes him feel all the more untouchable. But Rick doesn’t let him get away with it.

In fact, he informs Shane that he knew about the baby and the affair which indicates to Shane he doesn’t view him as a threat at all. The thing is, by this point, Shane was lethal and looking for any way to get Rick out of the picture. Rick eventually gets the upper hand, though.

“Here’s Negan” – Season 10, Episode 22

When Andrew Lincoln left The Walking Dead, they needed a character that could carry the weight of the series and, for better or worse, that was Negan. Humans are complex beings and Negan is certainly not exempt from it. “Here’s Negan” is one of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s best performances in the show.

His complexities are on full display: a husband caring for his sick wife dying of cancer who was also cheating on her with her best friend. Once he finds out about the diagnosis, he cuts things off to care for Lucille until her final breath, ultimately taking her own life. This sets Negan on a warpath and, by the time he’s done, the old Negan is dead. Who is left standing is the heartless, careless, dictator viewers meet in Season 6.

“A” – Season 4, Episode 16

Rick is forced to make a rash decision when his family is threatened while on their journey to Terminus. While trying to save Carl and Michonne, who are defenseless, Daryl is inadvertently added to the mix. So what does Rick do? He rips the throat out of the leader, Joe. It’s got everything you want in The Walking Dead — it’s gory, intense, and induces the nail-biting nerves you want in a thriller drama series.

“No Way Out” – Season 6, Episode 9

Season 6 is considered by many to be a “weaker” season of the series, but following the midseason finale, things really picked back up. The electricity and intensity of everyone involved fighting to save Alexandria was adrenaline pumping. The group is battling the Saviors and it seems like it might be the end of the road for them. However, they stick to their plan and find a way out — not completely unscathed, though. Carl does lose his eye and he goes unconscious, leaving a lot of uncertainty. By the end, he regains consciousness and looks pretty badass with an eyepatch.

[RELATED: How to Watch All The Walking Dead Shows in Order in 2025]

“The Grove” – Season 4, Episode 14

“Look at the flowers, Lizzie,” is a line that will stick with me for the rest of my life. This episode draws inspiration from the Of Mice and Men novel, and deviates from TWD source material in the best way. The acting here is top-notch, especially from Brighton Sharbino, who portrayed Lizzie.

It dives into how battling mental illness would look in an apocalyptic setting, as Lizzie became increasingly more unstable. While Lizzie believes the Walkers to just be “different,” her sister Mika doesn’t feel the same. Lizzie ends up stabbing her sister to death and Carol has to make the decision to kill Lizzie to spare Judith.

“Honor” – Season 8, Episode 9

Carl’s sacrifice in Season 8 is a storyline that has stuck with fans since its premiere. Throughout his arc, he went from a boy doing everything to please his father to a young man who, with Rick’s influence, formed his own identity. He saw the complex nature of humanity and did everything in his power to sway the group to make more thoughtful, peaceful decisions.

Negan set their home of Alexandria ablaze and its residents were left fighting for a way out. Carl had gotten Siddiq to safety but in doing so he was bit by a Walker. It was only a matter of time before he turned. His death was largely unnecessary and frustrating given that he makes it to the end of the comics, but it drives the plot home for Rick in the show. Plus, everyone’s performances in his final scenes — especially Danai Gurira — are stunning.

“No Sanctuary” – Season 5, Episode 1

When Carol was first introduced, she appeared timid and meek, but she continuously proved in the earlier seasons she was not to be underestimated. The Season 5 premiere was one of those examples when she saved the group from the cannibals at Terminus. Carol blows up the fences surrounding the compound and enters disguised as a walker, slaughtering everything in her path. After a battle to the death, she comes out on top, covered in blood. Melissa McBride is a major MVP for The Walking Dead and this was one of many showcases of why.

“Days Gone Bye” – Season 1, Episode 1

A list without the episode that kicked off the entire Universe feels way too blasphemous. 15 years later, this is still one of the highest-rated episodes of the entire show, and for good reason. Not only does it have that rewatch value, but it perfectly set up what the show was going to be in that timeframe. Lincoln waking up from a coma to see the world in complete disarray? Zombies among the living? It’s stunning and raw, in part thanks to Lincoln’s performance, with a bit of nostalgia all wrapped up tightly with a bow.

“Last Day on Earth” – Season 6, Episode 16

Negan’s intro into The Walking Dead Universe remains one of the most iconic. If you’re going to bring in a big bad, why wouldn’t he kill off a few fan favorites? This decision was one of the most polarizing at the time. Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s performance solidified him as one of television’s greatest villains.

Glenn’s brutal death was completely shocking to fans and is still one that’s heavily debated about whether it was necessary or not. It caused a lot of fans to stop watching altogether. One positive, though, is that Maggie went from a plot device to a character wholly her own by the time the show concluded.

The post 10 Best Episodes of The Walking Dead appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead season 2. The Walking Dead is about life-or-death choices — like choosing to head into zombie-overrun Atlanta or embarking on a 125-mile journey to Fort Benning. After the CDC proves to be a literal dead end, the group of Atlanta survivors led by Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) choose to try for the military base in the second season premiere of The Walking Dead, and what lies ahead are more fateful choices that will set the course for the mostly farm-set season.

Does the caravan turn back when travel is impeded by a thousand-car pileup that turned the highway into a graveyard, or try to maneuver around? When Dale’s (Jeffrey DeMunn) RV dies, do they scavenge the dead-filled cars, or forego necessary supplies because Lori Grimes (Sarah Wayne Callies) is uncomfortable with “grave-robbing”? When a walker herd descends upon the highway, they have no choice but to scurry under the cars for cover.

RELATED: How to Watch All The Walking Dead Shows in Order in 2025

The biggest “what-would-you-do” question comes when Carol’s (Melissa McBride) 12-year-old daughter, Sophia (Madison Lintz), is scared out of her hiding place by clawing walkers and runs off into the woods. Rick’s first choice is to chase after Sophia, and his second choice is to avoid shooting the walkers to avoid alerting the highway herd. Rick’s third choice is to hide the girl so he can draw the walkers away and dispatch them with a rock.

“They don’t get winded. I do,” Rick tells Sophia. “I can only deal with them one at a time. I wouldn’t be able to protect you. This is how we both survive.” Rick instructs Sophia about what to do if he doesn’t make it back: run back to the others on the highway, straight the way they came, and “keep the sun on your left shoulder.”

By the time Rick returns to the creek, Sophia is missing. She never made it back to the highway, causing Daryl (Norman Reedus), Glenn (Steven Yeun), and Shane (Jon Bernthal) to investigate with Rick. “I figured she just took off and ran back to the group,” Rick says. “I told her to go that way and keep the sun on her left shoulder.” Shane questions whether a scared little girl could have followed Rick’s instructions, but he insists she understood.

The group is then forced to make another choice: search for Sophia or move on. Daryl heads tracking Sophia, but the trail goes cold, and the search party returns to the highway empty handed. “How could you just leave her out there to begin with? How could you just leave her?” Carol questions Rick, who explains that drawing the walkers away from Sophia was her best chance. Shane says Rick “didn’t have a choice,” but Carol isn’t convinced.

“How was she supposed to find her way back on her own? She’s just a child,” Carol cries. Rick responds, “It was my only option. The only choice I could make.” The seven-episode search for Sophia ultimately ends in tragedy when a bitten and zombified Sophia steps out of the barn on the Greene family farm in the “Pretty Much Dead Already” midseason finale, leaving fans to ask: Did Rick make the right choice leaving Sophia?

“It was Rick’s fault,” one user argues on a debate-stirring post published to Reddit. Another user counters, “Rick was the least responsible for what happened to Sophia. He is the only one who reacted quickly in that moment and ran after her, if anyone else in that group had his quick thinking, she’d be alive. He did the best he could with the survival tools he had at that point in time — barely two weeks after waking up from his coma.”

Daryl was busy tending to an injured T-Dog (IronE Singleton) and Andrea (Laurie Holden) was trapped in the RV bathroom by a walker, the post adds, leaving other members of the group without an excuse for not going after Sophia. “Rick is definitely not in the wrong in the slightest,” another user argues, defending the decision to leave a hidden Sophia.

“He did the best he could given the situation,” reads another reply. “It’s impossible for the characters to blame [Sophia] for her own demise but we can.” As users debated Sophia’s choice to immediately run away instead of waiting for Rick’s return, half the replies blamed Rick for Sophia’s fate, and the other half defended Rick’s decision-making.

But the best defense is from Rick’s wife, Lori: “You have got to stop blaming Rick. It is in your face every time you look at him,” she tells Carol. “When Sophia ran he didn’t hesitate, did he? Not for a second. I don’t know that any of us would have gone after her the way he did, or made the hard decisions that he had to make, or that anybody could have done it any differently.”

Lori concludes, “You all look to him and then you blame him when he’s not perfect.”

The Walking Dead is now streaming on Netflix.

The post The Walking Dead Fans Blame Rick Grimes for Sophia’s Fate appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Walking Dead #105 is a real eye-opener. Originally printed in 2012, it’s the first issue to go inside the Sanctuary, a former steel mill converted into a base for Negan’s Saviors. Just issues after bashing in Glenn’s brains with his barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat, a cordial Negan takes Carl Grimes on a tour of the Sanctuary and introduces the boy to his harem of lingerie-clad wives. Negan then forces Carl to remove the bandage covering his missing eye, makes him sing a song while menacing him with his bat Lucille, and has Carl watch as he maims an insubordinate Savior with a scalding hot iron.

It’s shown that Negan coerces women into being his “wives” rather than have them work for points to survive like the rest of the Saviors. “When I choose a new wife, the process is completely voluntary,” Negan explains. “It’s an honor to be with me, to no longer have to trade points to trade for goods and services. But it comes with a price: total devotion. And that can sometimes be a hard pill for others to swallow. But swallow it they must… or it’s the iron for you.”

RELATED: The Walking Dead Reveals New Villain Cut From the Series

When Negan’s “wife” Amber is caught with her former boyfriend Mark, he provokes Negan’s ire — and his iron.

Negan reminds Amber that her position is “completely voluntary,” telling the crying girl, “I don’t want anyone here if they don’t want to be.” But if Amber leaves him for Mark, Negan warns, “You’ll forfeit your privileges and go back to whatever job you had before Sherry brought you to us, but you can.”

What she can’t do, he screams, is cheat on him. “So what’s it going to be? You going back to Mark? Back to earning points? Working for your supper? Or are you staying?” A sobbing Amber is bullied into staying and Mark is scarred publicly to “forever bear the shame of his actions on his face.”

“I’d say more than anything else, at least on social media, the harem became one of the most controversial aspects of this comic,” Kirkman writes in the colorized reprint version of The Walking Dead Deluxe #105. “Even more than some of the upcoming bits with The Whisperers, which always surprised me. I certainly have a line I won’t cross. No pun intended.”

“You can look to Garth Ennis’ Crossed series to see a far more brutal and unforgiving exploration of the apocalypse,” Kirkman continued, referring to the comic that depicts graphic acts of stomach-turning depravity. “The Walking Dead is EXTREMELY tame by comparison, but that was by design. The harsh elements that did make it in, I always tried to make sure they were a reflection of life. I’d always argue no matter how dark things got in this series, you could always pick up a newspaper and read far more gruesome things happening for real.”

“The world is a dark place, and I didn’t want to shy away from portraying that for fear of offending anyone,” Kirkman concluded.

The Walking Dead Deluxe #105 is on sale now from Image Comics.

The post The Walking Dead Creator Robert Kirkman Addresses Controversial Negan Issue appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Walking Dead Universe lives on Netflix. The Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira-fronted spinoff The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live was added to the streaming service on Jan. 13, nearly a year after the limited series first aired on AMC and AMC+, joining a library that includes all 11 seasons of the mothership series that splintered into new shows.

Dead City tracked Lauren Cohan’s Maggie and Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan to New York City, Daryl Dixon followed Norman Reedus’ Daryl and Melissa McBride’s Carol overseas to France, and The Ones Who Live reunited Gurira’s Michonne and Lincoln’s Rick Grimes at the Civic Republic in Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, AMC expanded the wider universe with spinoffs Fear the Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, and the anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead, which are mostly standalone except for a few crossovers. (Fear imported Lennie James’ Morgan, Austin Amelio’s Dwight, and Christine Evangelista’s Sherry from The Walking Dead, while Pollyanna McIntosh’s Jadis bridged The Walking Dead and World Beyond as a member of the organization linking the shows together: the Civic Republic Military.)

While it’s all connected in TWD Universe, you won’t find all seven series in one place. You’ll need subscriptions for multiple streaming services to watch every Walking Dead series in release order, which we’ve listed below.

The Walking Dead (Seasons 1-11)

The original series follows Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his group of survivors in the walker apocalypse — Daryl (Norman Reedus), Carol (Melissa McBride), Glenn (Steven Yeun), Maggie (Lauren Cohan), and Michonne (Danai Gurira) among them — as they fight the dead and fear the living, like the Governor (David Morrissey) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).

Where to watch: Netflix

Fear the Walking Dead (Seasons 1-8)

Originally set in Los Angeles during the early days of the apocalypse, Fear followed the dysfunctional family of Madison Clark (Kim Dickens), her children Nick (Frank Dillane) and daughter Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), partner Travis Manawa (Cliff Curtis), and his son, Chris (Lorenzo Henrie). Later seasons saw The Walking Dead‘s Morgan Jones (Lennie James) join the ensemble cast in a crossover with the flagship.

Where to watch: Netflix and AMC+

The Walking Dead: World Beyond (Seasons 1-2)

Ten years after society fell, a group of teenagers sheltered from the dangers of the post-apocalyptic world receive a message that inspires them to leave the safety of the only home they have ever known and embark on a cross-country journey. Along the way, sisters Iris (Aliyah Royale) and Hope (Alexa Mansour), joined by friends Elton (Nicholas Cantu) and Silas (Hal Cumpston), uncover the secrets of the shadowy Civic Republic Military in the two-season limited series.

Where to watch: AMC+

Tales of the Walking Dead (Season 1)

Anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead features a star-studded cast with new stories set throughout the Walking Dead timeline. Besides an origin story for Alpha (Samantha Morton) of the Whisperers, the genre-bending six-episode series introduces Joe (Terry Crews), Evie (Olivia Munn), Blair (Parker Posey), Gina (Jillian Bell), Amy (Poppy Liu), Dr. Everett (Anthony Edwards), Davon (Jessie T. Usher), Idalia (Daniella Pineda) and Eric (Danny Ramirez).

Where to watch: AMC+

The Walking Dead: Dead City (Season 1)

Picking up years after the events of The Walking Dead‘s final season, the spinoff follows enemies Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as they travel to post-apocalyptic Manhattan – a crumbling city filled with the dead and denizens who have made it a world full of anarchy, danger, beauty, and terror — on a mission to rescue Maggie’s son, Hershel (Logan Kim), from The Croat (Željko Ivanek).

Where to watch: AMC+

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon (Season 1)

After The Walking Dead season 11, Daryl (Norman Reedus) finds himself transported overseas and stranded in France in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. To get home, he agrees to escort Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) to safety at The Nest on the French coast, a dangerous mission that makes them a target of Marion Genet (Anne Charrier) and her paramilitary group, Pouvoir des Vivants.

Where to watch: Netflix and AMC+

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live (Season 1)

Years after Rick’s (Andrew Lincoln) disappearance in The Walking Dead season 9 — when Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) secretly shuttled him away from his loved ones aboard a CRM helicopter — he’s been conscripted into the Civic Republic Military, a fate from which he’s unable to escape. Meanwhile, Rick’s wife Michonne (Danai Gurira) embarks on her own mission to find Rick and bring him home after learning he was alive in The Walking Dead season 10.

Where to watch: Netflix and AMC+

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol (Season 2)

Carol (Melissa McBride) departs for France after learning that best friend Daryl (Norman Reedus) was transported overseas in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 1. The six-episode second season, titled The Book of Carol, sees Daryl and Carol struggle to reunite as they come under threat from Madame Genet (Anne Charrier) and an army of amped-up walkers.

Where to watch: AMC+

The post How to Watch All The Walking Dead Shows in Order in 2025 appeared first on ComicBook.com.

A brand new week is upon us, and it is set to be another week filled with exciting new additions on Netflix. Six of the next seven days will see the streaming giant add titles to its ever-growing lineup in the United States, including the first season of a hit zombie series and the official comeback of one of Hollywood’s most popular stars.

Things will kick off on Monday, January 13th when Netflix continues its partnership with AMC. The streamer will be adding the entire first season of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live on that day. The Ones Who Live is a spinoff/sequel series that follows the story of Rick and Michonne after the conclusion of The Walking Dead.

On Friday, Netflix will be premiering the original film Back in Action, which stars Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx. This will be the first on-screen role for Diaz since she and Foxx starred in the Annie remake back in 2014.

You can check out the full rundown of this week’s Netflix additions below!

Monday, January 13th

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live: Season 1

Tuesday, January 14th

Ari Shaffir: America’s Sweetheart — NETFLIX COMEDY SPECIAL

Single’s Inferno: Season 4 (KR) — NETFLIX SERIES
A new batch of singles enter Inferno for a chance at love. With romance, competition and heartbreak on the line, who will succeed in finding the one?

[RELATED: 10 Video Games Being Adapted to Movies and TV]

Wednesday, January 15th

Hereditary
Krapopolis: Season 1

Public Disorder (IT) — NETFLIX SERIES
An incident sparks internal conflict as members of a riot squad juggle personal worries with the daily tension of police work on the streets.

Thursday, January 16th

XO, Kitty: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES
Kitty Song Covey is back in Seoul for a new semester at KISS, where she will learn that life, family and love are more complicated than she ever imagined.

Friday, January 17th

Back in Action — NETFLIX FILM
Years after giving up life as CIA spies to start a family, Emily and Matt find themselves dragged back into the world of espionage when their cover is blown.

Love Is Blind: Germany (DE) — NETFLIX SERIES (new episodes)
The experiment comes to Germany as local singles seek true love and a commitment that lasts a lifetime, all before meeting each other face-to-face.

Young, Famous & African: Season 3 (ZA) — NETFLIX SERIES
Africa’s elite are back to the glitz, gossip, and cutting shade of their opulent inner circle, where luxury meets legacy — and drama rules the day.

Saturday, January 18th

SAKAMOTO DAYS (JP) — NETFLIX ANIME (new episodes)
Once the greatest hitman of all, Taro Sakamoto retired in the name of love. But when his past catches up, he must fight to protect his beloved family.

The post Everything Coming to Netflix This Week (January 13th) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Over 193 issues, Rick Grimes and the survivors of The Walking Dead encountered the worst of humanity. From villains like The Governor, Negan, and Alpha, to enemy groups like the Hunters, the Scavengers, the Saviors, and the Whisperers, series creator Robert Kirkman filled the pages of his zombie comic with the real threat of the walker apocalypse: the living. But in this week’s The Walking Dead Deluxe #104 — a colorized version of the 2012 issue — Kirkman’s original notes revealed plans for a villain named “The Contractor.”

“That, ladies and gentlemen, is an unrealized villain for the series,” Kirkman wrote in the “Cutting Room Floor” section of the issue. “I don’t recall details on this particular villain. Cool name.”

“Kind of [a] shame it never made it into the book,” Kirkman added. “Some day I’ll have to tell everyone about ‘The Gardener.'”

RELATED: Robert Kirkman Named a Major Walking Dead Villain After His School Bully: “F*** That Guy”

Kirkman explained his plotting process in the letters column of the 2012 edition, writing he had “a solid plot through issue 200 and general ideas that could continue after that.” (The series concluded with The Walking Dead #193 in 2019.)

“I’m at a point with the series where I plot in 24 issue chunks, loosely,” Kirkman wrote, “and then flesh things out as I write. I try to have at least four of those chunks planned, but there are times when a new chunk of issues is dropped in and things get pushed back. That’s why I have such far-reaching plans.”

Those plans often changed. In The Walking Dead Deluxe #98, Kirkman revealed that the issue’s major death was a “last-minute change” from how he originally plotted the issue.

“I like having as much track laid ahead of me as possible. So I’m always plotting ‘ifs’,” he wrote. “‘If I get to issue No. 30, maybe this,’ and ‘if I get to issue No. 50, maybe this.’ I leave myself options, so I always have some plans I can build to. But I’m careful to always leave myself room to just shoot from the hip and do whatever I want month to month, no matter how crazy the issue. [#98] was one of those issues.”

Issue #104 takes place during Volume 18: What Comes After, when the Alexandrians are forced to be subservient to Negan and the Saviors. As Jesus of the Hilltop follows Dwight to the Sanctuary, a young Carl Grimes stows away on a Saviors caravan and opens fire on Negan and his men to avenge Glenn (who was beaten to death by Negan issues earlier in #100).

The Walking Dead Deluxe #104 is on sale now from Image Comics.

The post The Walking Dead Reveals New Villain Cut From the Series appeared first on ComicBook.com.

“Do there have to be zombies?” That’s what an NBC executive reportedly asked Frank Darabont, the Oscar-nominated writer-director of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, when the filmmaker pitched a live-action adaptation of Image Comics’ post-apocalyptic zombie comic The Walking Dead. The network, which envisioned the black-and-white horror comic book as a zombie-crime-of-the-week police procedural, was one of multiple networks that kicked the tires on a TV adaptation of the comic book from writer Robert Kirkman and artists Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard. The others: HBO and AMC.

“The honest truth is that Frank Darabont got The Walking Dead made. If Frank Darabont doesn’t go into House of Secrets [comic store] in Burbank and somebody recommends him a Walking Dead comic, I’m not sitting here right now,” Kirkman, who served as an executive producer on the television series, said during a panel at CCXP (via Collider).

[RELATED: Robert Kirkman Named a Walking Dead Villain After His School Bully: “F*** That Guy”]

Launched in 2003, Image published 70 issues of The Walking Dead comic book by the time AMC greenlit a six-episode first season in March 2010. Before announcing TWD as its fourth original series following Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Rubicon, the cable channel was in a bidding war with premium television network HBO, home to hit dramas Oz, The Wire, and The Sopranos.

“So, I wasn’t in a lot of those meetings. I made a lot of decisions and there’s some behind the scenes stuff that I probably can’t get into,” Kirkman said, “but a lot of those calls were me and my manager trying to navigate the waters of AMC and what they had promised Darabont, what was going on with that. So, I have a lot of visibility into the early days of production on that show, and I will only tell those stories in private.”

The Darabont-directed pilot produced by AMC made few changes to the first issue of Kirkman’s comic book, besides fleshing out police officer Rick Grimes’ encounter with fellow zombie apocalypse survivors Morgan and Duane Jones. While the season would make some deviations from the comic — including a standoff with the Vatos, an episode that marked Kirkman’s first teleplay credit on the series — Kirkman noted AMC’s Walking Dead was more faithful than most television adaptations “because Walking Dead was a very desired project and there was kind of a bidding war between HBO and AMC that was happening.”

“And because of that bidding war, AMC and HBO kind of got into a competition of, ‘We’ll give Robert this.’ ‘No, we’ll give Robert this.’ ‘No, we’ll give Robert this.’ ‘No, we’ll give Robert this,’” Kirkman said. “We just kept going, ‘Well, HBO gave us this,’ and then AMC would go, ‘All right.’ And then to HBO, we’d be like, ‘AMC gave us this,’ and HBO’d go, ‘All right.’”

“I kept getting more access, more control, more involved in the project until I was in the writer’s room, I was full EP, I was with everybody making casting decisions,” he continued. “I was fortunate that those two places wanted it. And if I hadn’t had that, one of those two places probably would have been, ‘I don’t think we need this guy from Kentucky who’s never written television before. Maybe we’ll just go with the Oscar-winning director.’ Being in my own head and knowing what I know about Walking Dead, I was the guy that knew the most, I was pretty valuable in that room.”

Kirkman added, “I understand from their perspective how crazy the creators and authors and people seem. And so I can see their perspective, but at the same time, Walking Dead was a pretty popular show. And I cannot tell you how many times I was in a production meeting or a casting meeting or sitting in the writer’s room going, ‘I did this in the comic, this is how the audience reacted. If we do this in the show, this is how people will react,’ and that stuff was very valuable. So, I would say that there is tremendous value to keeping the original authors and creators involved in every step of the way.”

[RELATED: Robert Kirkman: Invincible-Style Walking Dead Animated Series Can’t Happen “Until I Get the Rights Back From AMC”]

The comic book creator addressed the AMC adaptation in 2010’s The Walking Dead #70, telling readers in the issue’s letters page he had “high hopes” for the just-announced TV series from Darabont and producer Gale Anne Hurd (The Abyss and The Terminator).

“I know you readers out there have concerns for adaptations of your favorite comics,” Kirkman wrote at the time. “Sometimes it works out, sometimes it’s a disaster. But I’m here to say that this one is looking good. It’s as faithful to the comic as I want it to be, meaning, it’s not a panel-for-panel adaptation, but it’s close, close enough that if you enjoy the comic, you’ll enjoy the show and there will still be surprises along the way.”

“I’d hate for you guys to be watching the show knowing that Rick is going to lose a hand next episode, or that Carol is going to die next season,” Kirkman continued. “There will still be surprises, which I think makes it The Walking Dead. If you knew what was coming, it would be boring.”

The Walking Dead pilot, “Days Gone Bye,” was watched by 5.3 million viewers when it premiered on Halloween night 2010 — the largest audience for any original AMC series. When counting 10 p.m., 11:30 p.m., and 1 a.m. airings, the episode’s cumulative total was 8.1 million viewers. “Days Gone Bye” launched with the highest delivery for any cable series premiere that year with 3.6 million viewers in the coveted adult 18-49 demo and spawned an 11-season, 177-episode run on AMC.

The post How a Bidding War Between HBO and AMC Brought The Walking Dead TV Show to Life appeared first on ComicBook.com.

If your name is Phillip and you attended Breckenridge Elementary with Robert Kirkman in Lexington, Kentucky, you’re a dead man. In the latest issue of The Walking Dead Deluxe, the creator recalled naming the comic book’s first major villain after his school bully: The Governor, a sadistic, psychopathic rapist who is ultimately eaten alive by zombies. (In the comics, the Governor’s real name is Brian Blake before he takes his brother Philip’s name. David Morrissey’s version on The Walking Dead television show was Philip Blake and used the name Brian as an alias.)

“In elementary school, the school bully of Breckenridge Elementary in Lexington, Kentucky was a boy named Phillip,” Kirkman wrote in this week’s The Walking Dead Deluxe #101. “So that’s usually my shorthand for sh-tty characters. I will never name a good character Phillip. They will always be a villain to some degree.”

RELATED: The Walking Dead Deluxe #100: Glenn’s Death Is Much More Horrific in Color

“I also have to be careful not to use that name for every bad/sh-tty character across all my books,” the Invincible and Void Rivals writer continued. Kirkman added that Phillip “was just the first instance of a human being I encountered who did mean things for no reason” and it “made an impression.”

“F— that guy,” Kirkman concluded.

Introduced in The Walking Dead #27, the Governor cut off Rick Grimes’ hand in his second appearance, raped Michonne, decapitated Tyreese, executed Hershel, and caused the deaths of Lori and Judith Grimes during an attack on the prison. (Those those are just a few of the atrocities committed by The Walking Dead‘s most twisted villain.) Michonne would eventually get her revenge on the Governor when she mutilated and tortured him to near-death before gouging out his eye with a spoon.

RELATED: The Walking Dead Artist Refused to Draw Controversial Comic Book Issue

“Boy was it a controversial issue,” Kirkman recounted in The Walking Dead Deluxe #33 when the issue was printed in color for the first time in 2022. “I always strived to be as brutal as I believed this world could get and not shy away from things… for better or for worse, that was the intent of [that] issue.”

Kirkman and author Jay Bonansinga fleshed out Brian/Philip’s backstory in four novels published between 2011 and 2014: The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor, The Walking Dead: The Road to Woodbury, and The Walking Dead: The Fall of the Governor Part One and Part Two.

The Walking Dead Deluxe #101, the latest issue in colorized reprint series, is on sale now from Image Comics.

The post Robert Kirkman Named a Walking Dead Villain After His School Bully: “F*** That Guy” appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Walking Dead comic book was first printed in black and white for three reasons. First, printing comics in black and white is typically cheaper than color. Second, it paid homage to the first George A. Romero zombie movie, 1968’s Night of the Living Dead. Third: gore.

As Robert Kirkman explained in the first issue of the colorized reprint series The Walking Dead Deluxe, “This book is mighty gory, it can get pretty gross at times. And while I may not understand it myself, some people find that to be off-putting.” But when presented without color, Kirkman continued, “Those scenes can be less jarring and gross. As much as I love gore, I never wanted it to overshadow the emotion of the scene, and black and white, I feel, helps keep the focus on the emotion and loss than all that splashy red stuff.”

RELATED: The Walking Dead Creator Reveals Alternate Glenn Death

There is all that splashy red stuff and more in The Walking Dead Deluxe #100. Penciled by Charlie Adlard and newly colored by Dave McCaig, the milestone issue depicts the debut appearance of Negan and Glenn’s brutal death in full color the first time since the original printing in 2012.

“It certainly hits harder with Dave McGaig’s color calling all attention to the esteemed Mr. Adlard’s amazing drawings,” Kirkman wrote in the Cutting Room Floor section of the anniversary issue, out now from Image Comics. “Sheesh. It’s a lot.” A splash page that depicts Glenn’s remains, his skull and brains bashed in by Negan’s barbwire-wrapped baseball bat, Lucille, “is the page that finally tops Judith’s little hand poking out from under Lori’s dead body. Quite the arresting image.”

After the Saviors killed Abraham in issue #98, Rick Grimes took a small group of survivors to warn Jesus and the Hilltop about Negan’s attack. Rick, Carl, Michonne, Heath, Maggie, Glenn, and their adopted daughter, Sophia, were captured by the Saviors and were forced to kneel before the bat-wielding Negan.

A game of “eeny, meeny, miny, moe” ended with Negan plucking Glenn out of the lineup and brutally beating him to death with a baseball bat in a display of graphic violence that is every bit as gory as the television show. (Warning: the below image is not for the faint of heart.)

RELATED: A Major Walking Dead Death Was a Last-Minute Change

“I’m pretty proud of the fact that there’s a before Negan and after Negan feeling to this comic,” Kirkman wrote. “It’s hard to keep things interesting and compelling for 100 issues, it’s a slog. Honestly, it was a constant battle, but Negan feels like a breath of fresh air for the book. I mean, this issue really does feel like the first issue of a new era. As sad as it is. Man, I was emotional re-reading this issue. Poor Glenn.”

The Walking Dead Deluxe issue #100 is on sale now, with a new cover by David Finch and variant covers by Adlard & McCaig, Mattia De Iulis, Julian Totino Tedesco, Arthur Adams, Yasmine Putri, Simon Bisley, and Derek Hunter.

The post The Walking Dead Deluxe #100: Glenn’s Death Is Much More Brutal in Color appeared first on ComicBook.com.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol finale, “Au Revoir Les Enfants.”] Daryl and Carol are headed home… eventually. After flying halfway around the world to track down her missing best friend in France, Carol (Melissa McBride) reunited with Daryl (Norman Reedus) and helped Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) escape Paris on a plane piloted by Ash (Manish Dayal).

Because the aircraft could only carry three passengers, Daryl chose to stay behind and find another way back to America — a sacrifice Carol couldn’t let him make alone. And so the season finale ended with Daryl and Carol making the 50-kilometer trek through the Channel Tunnel to England.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 3 trailer (below) shows Daryl and Carol in London led by a guide (series newcomer Stephen Merchant), someone setting sail across the Atlantic Ocean, and the duo in what appears to be the Tabernas Desert in Spain. “Thought it was all over,” Daryl can be heard saying in the trailer. “You and me both,” replies Carol, looking worse for wear.

RELATED: How The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2 Finale Sets up Season 3

At San Diego Comic-Con in July, AMC announced that the Madrid-based third season would be set and shot in Spain. On-location filming in the Galicia, Aragón, Catalonia and Valencia regions provide “a new and unique backdrop for the post-apocalyptic world,” the network said in a statement.

Premiering in 2025 on AMC and AMC+, season 3 of Daryl Dixon “tracks Carol and Daryl as they continue their journey towards home and the ones they love,” per the synopsis. “As they struggle to find their way back, the path takes them farther astray, leading them through distant lands with ever-changing and unfamiliar conditions as they witness the various effects of the Walker apocalypse.”

In addition to Reedus, McBride, and Merchant, the new season stars Spanish actors Eduardo Noriega (The Devil’s Backbone, Vantage Point), Óscar Jaenada (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Hernán) and Alexandra Masangkay (Días mejores, Valley of Shadows) as series regulars. Candela Saitta (Máxima, Último primer día) and Hugo Arbués (the Through My Window trilogy, Past Lies) have also been cast in recurring roles.

The post The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 3 Trailer Teases Daryl and Carol in Spain appeared first on ComicBook.com.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers from The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol finale, “Au Revoir Les Enfants.”] “Home is wherever the people you love are,” and for Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride), that’s America. After the best friends reunited at the Nest — where Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) died protecting her nephew, Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) — the duo fled to the French countryside to find the boy before Losang (Joel de la Fuente). Having united what remains of the Pouvoir and Union de l’Espoir following Genet’s (Anne Charrier) death, Losang led his acolytes into the skull-filled Catacombs of Paris. There the monk met his end when Daryl beat him to death with one of those skulls, avenging Isabelle.

Demimonde club owner Anna (Lukerya Ilyashenko) provided Daryl with the ethanol needed for Ash (Manish Dayal) to pilot his plane back to America, but with a hitch: the plane can’t get off the ground with four passengers. The Daryl Dixon season 2 finale began with Daryl choosing to stay behind in Paris while Carol compelled Ash to leave her behind and fly her friend home in her place.

Meanwhile, Losang and Genet’s respective second in commands, Sister Jacinta (Nassima Benchicou) and Sabine (Tatiana Gousseff), formed an alliance to find the airplane and fulfill Losang’s prophecy. They strong-armed Anna to give up the plane and Laurent’s location, but at the last minute, she led Jacinta’s people into the path of the brûlant: the acidic-blooded burner walkers. Jacinta was bitten and Anna died when she was left to be torn apart for her betrayal.

RELATED: The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 3 Trailer Teases Daryl & Carol in Spain

Fallou (Eriq Ebouaney) and Codron (Romain Levi) arrived in time to help Daryl load Laurent into the plane with Carol and Ash. Daryl then provided the plane with cover as Jacinta and her ATV-riding Guerrier attempted to impede the plane from taking off in an assault on the runway. Just as it looked like the Guerrier were going to intercept the plane, Carol fired the shot that let Ash and Laurent escape — leaving Carol and Daryl stranded in France as Ash agreed to fly Laurent to the Commonwealth in Ohio. Jacinta then turned her gun on herself as she watched the plane disappear into the sky above Paris.

[RELATED: The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 3 Trailer Teases Daryl & Carol in Spain]

But all was not lost. Fallou connected with a Scottish couple at the Demimonde who could help them get to England. From there, Daryl and Carol could find a way across the Atlantic Ocean to America. (The England connection was first referenced back in the first season finale, when Losang arranged a boat from Dover in Kent, South East England, that was to transport Daryl to the island of Newfoundland.)

Angus (Matt Swift) and Fiona (Sarah McCardie) guided Daryl, Carol, and Codron to the Channel Tunnel, an undersea tunnel linking northern France to southern England. The Chunnel is 50 kilometers (about 31 miles) and about a nine-hour walk through bat-filled tunnels blocked by Army barricades. Exposure to bat guano, known to have psychoactive effects, caused the group to become paranoid and suffer hallucinations: Carol confronted a vision of her zombified daughter, Sophia; Codron wrestled with the death of his brother, Michel; and Daryl saw a vision of Isabelle, who reminded Daryl to “bet on hope” before she faded away into fireflies with the words, “Bon courage [good luck], Monsieur Dixon.”

As the group fought off their trauma-induced hallucinations and bioluminescent walkers, Angus and Fiona attacked Daryl for the two gas masks left behind by the soldiers driven mad in the tunnels. And then Daryl killed Angus and Fiona before they could kill him. As Carol let Sophia go, and Daryl let go of Isabelle, Codron ran off into the Chunnel, leaving his fate unknown.

The episode ended with Daryl and Carol, reunited once more, donning gas masks to make the trek through the Chunnel and into England. “Let’s go home,” Carol said as The Rolling Stones song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” played out their time in France.

Daryl and Carol’s long journey home to Ohio will take them through Spain in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 3, which will air on AMC in 2025. (Watch the just-released Daryl Dixon season 3 trailer here.)

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Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol episode 4. “Who came back?” That was the question that Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) asked Carol (Melissa McBride) when his best friend connected with him over the radio to tell him that someone or something “came back” just before Daryl went missing in Freeport, Maine. But then the connection was lost, and Daryl didn’t get an answer to his question before he was transported halfway around the world to France on a cargo ship.

After Carol tracked down Daryl, following his trail from Maine to France, Sunday’s “La Paradis Pour Toi” episode finally reunited the duo for the first time since The Walking Dead series finale in 2022. The pair physically reconnected during an attack on the Nest, then emotionally reconnected during a trek through the French countryside.

“You said on the radio that time someone came back. Who was it?” Daryl asked. Carol then revealed “it wasn’t a person, it was a feeling.”

After settling at the Commonwealth community in Ohio, and then watching Daryl ride off on his bike, “Everything at Commonwealth got so quiet,” she said. “All that old stuff came back like ghosts. So I got out of there, and I was worried about you.” Carol also name-dropped Connie (Lauren Ridloff) and Judith Grimes (Cailey Fleming), telling Daryl, “She didn’t want me to go. Part of her knew I had to if there was a chance I could find you.”

It’s not unlike Daryl’s reason for leaving the Commonwealth: He told Judith that he would keep an eye out for her parents, Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira), while out on the road. Rick and Michonne eventually found their way back to each other and returned home in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, placing the events of Daryl Dixon and The Book of Carol before that series.

“I always sort of took it as maybe that Rick had come back, and that it was Rick’s return that sort of triggered or reignited some of that trauma,” series executive producer Greg Nicotero told ComicBook about Carol’s visions of her dead daughter, Sophia. “And it’s interesting, because you would have thought that she had sort of dealt with that trauma already after so many years. So it definitely had to have been something that kind of reignited it.”

“That’s one thing that I had talked to Melissa about: Maybe it’s actually the fact that she’s searching for Daryl, just like Daryl was searching for Sophia,” Nicotero added. “And that could have sort of brought a lot of that back to the surface because of the sense of loss that she was feeling and the desperation to find him. She had the desperation to find Sophia.”

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2 air Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and ComicBook TWD on Facebook for more Walking Dead Universe coverage.

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Warning: This article contains spoilers from The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol episode 4. Sunday’s “La Paradis Pour Toi” episode of Daryl Dixon was, as the French would say, doux-amer: Bittersweet. At long last, best friends Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride) reunited at the Nest after she hitched a ride with Genet (Anne Charrier), who injected her army of Guerrier with a serum that turned the soldiers into amped-up zombies she then let loose onto the abbey. That was the good part.

While Genet’s Pouvoir sought to crush Union de l’Espoir‘s “tyranny of false hope” by killing their savior, Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi), Union leader Losang (Joel de la Fuente) attempted to restore his flock’s wavering faith by having the boy bitten by a walker as proof of his immunity. But Fallou (Eriq Ebouaney) helped Laurent escape the Nest, so when Losang failed to get Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) to give up her nephew’s location, he stabbed her in the stomach and left her to die as the hungry ones invaded Mont-Saint-Michel.

Carol saved Isabelle from being bitten before finding Daryl and bringing him to the woman who said Je t’aime — “I love you” — after sealing their blossoming relationship with a kiss just last episode. But it was too late. Isabelle succumbed to her injuries and, with her dying breath, told Daryl to take care of Laurent. “I can see them. The fireflies,” she said of the lightning bugs that Daryl told her she’d find when she went home with him to America. “They’re so beautiful.”

It was a gut-wrenching end for Isabelle, who died protecting Laurent — keeping her promise to her sister.

“For the moment when Isabelle dies, I think what we wanted was great dignity, intelligence, strength, and a really moving ending to the character,” showrunner and episode co-writer David Zabel explained on AMC+’s The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol Episode Insider. “Isabelle’s death hits hard because she’s touched something within [Daryl] that we haven’t seen before, and it’s because she’s so different from him. And it’s also because she’s tied into this boy that he loves, and now he has to make sure, after that, not to let the same thing happen with Laurent.”

Added Poésy, “It’s a world where I guess you’re very used to saying goodbye. I think there’s an acceptance. I don’t think she’s fighting it. I think she knows she can’t.”

“It’s been so nice, season two,” she continued. “It’s been such a treat to take Isabelle a bit further, and knowing that we were taking these two characters on a journey and exploring their relationship a bit more was just the greatest luxury.”

Isabelle wasn’t the only one to met their end this episode. After Daryl and Carol escaped to the French countryside, kind strangers Didi (Marie-Christine Adam) and Theo (François-Éric Gendron) gave them shelter. But when Genet tracked Daryl and Carol to the village, it was Carol who shot Genet with a tranquilizer gun and a dose of the amper serum. Genet went into violent convulsions as her eyes turned black and burst out of her head — dying a gory and gruesome death.

“The trick with Genet is she has been a tremendous villain, so her death has to live up to the glory of her evil-doings,” said series executive producer and special makeup effects artist Greg Nicotero. “We really wanted her death to be just completely horrific, painful, gut-wrenching.”

“She really did believe she was doing the right thing for the community. Finding order, and that’s it, it’s gone,” added Charrier. “It’s a great death. It was the only way she could die: from the monsters she created. She’s going to be one of them. It’s a complete character. Her journey is complete. I’m proud of it.”

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2 air Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and ComicBook TWD on Facebook for more Walking Dead Universe coverage.

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Warning: This story contains spoilers from The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol episode 4. “It’s not like we’re never going to see each other again,” Daryl (Norman Reedus) told best friend Carol (Melissa McBride) in their last scene together on The Walking Dead series finale. Nearly two years and two continents later, Daryl and Carol reunited during Marion Genet’s (Anne Charrier) attack on the Nest at Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, France, where Daryl delivered Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) and his aunt Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) to safety last season. Meanwhile, Carol completed her own mission: tracking down Daryl halfway around the world.

Sunday’s episode, titled “La Paradis Pour Toi,” began with Daryl and Carol on opposing sides: Daryl a prisoner of Losang’s (Joel de la Fuente) religious resistance group Union de L’Espoir (Union of Hope), and Carol trapped behind enemy lines with the Pouvoir du Vivant (Power of the Living) as Genet turned her Guerriers into an army of Ampers: the amped-up zombies that are stronger and faster than your average walker.

With help from the excommunicated Guerrier Codron (Romain Levi), Carol infiltrated the abbey as it was besieged by Genet’s zombified soldiers. Carol then rescued Isabelle after Losang stabbed the former nun and left her to die when she refused to give up Laurent so that he could restore his flock’s waning faith by proving the boy is immune to bites.

As Daryl fought his way through the Nest to find Isabelle, he instead found Carol. Like their emotional reunion outside Terminus so long ago, Daryl was in disbelief as he raced over and embraced Carol in a tearful hug. Carol then took Daryl to Isabelle and comforted him as the woman he’d fallen in love with succumbed to her wounds and died in his arms.

Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride explain the Caryl reunion in Daryl Dixon Episode 4

“I felt like the anticipation of those two characters meeting up again is something that’s been talked about for so long, and so much, that the buildup to that happening was really natural,” Reedus tells ComicBook. “We worked really hard on making that as climactic as possible in the throes of all these things happening in all these different directions.”

“We worked really hard to get that right on the page,” Reedus added about crafting the Daryl and Carol reunion. “From Darryl’s perspective, his whole mission is failing outside the walls. He’s trapped and he’s just listening to the screams and the explosions and the fight going on and the kid [Laurent] and all these things. And he’s at the loneliest place he could possibly be in his head.”

The episode, directed by Daniel Percival and co-written by showrunner David Zabel and Jason Richman, underwent rewrites to make the Caryl reunion happen at the moment it was most unexpected: mid-battle.

“We rewrote that. We all got together and we talked about it and we changed that a little bit to make it so that it’s an elevated reunion, that it happens out of nowhere,” Reedus adds. “His focus is get out there, find the kid, save him, run from the screams, but run into the screaming. And it happens out of nowhere. And he’s like, ‘Is this real?’ It’s the person that he needed the most at the exact right time he needed her.”

By the end of the attack on the Nest, Reedus notes, Daryl is “completely isolated and failing, and it’s the last fight. And then to see her, I think it meant the most to him, rather than some other way of reuniting. It was at the right moment. It’s like the whole world just stops, and it’s about those two people.”

How Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol compares to The Walking Dead Season 5

The moment recalls Daryl and Carol’s big reunion in the Walking Dead season 5 episode “No Sanctuary,” where Carol returned to save the group from Terminus after being exiled from the prison by Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln). “It does mirror that Terminus reunion in that they stop in their tracks, and they’re just looking at each other,” McBride notes. “I like that it mirrors that, because it is such a trippy moment that’s on the other side of the world. It had to be a moment where he does think, ‘Is this even real?’ For both of them.”

Though there are similarities, Reedus points out that the scenes occur under “different circumstances.”

“That Terminus reunion, [Carol’s] in the back of his head. ‘Where is she? Where is she? Oh my God, there she is.’ And then like a little kid, he runs at her,” Reedus says. On Daryl Dixon, “It comes out of nowhere. And Daryl’s not with anybody. He’s not with any of that group. There’s nothing like that. He’s all by himself, and we really wanted that scene to be: The one person he needs is right in front of him at the right time when he’s at his lowest. And it had to be a different mindset.” I thought it was very different than Terminus.”

“It was very different, but at the same time, it’s similar in that they’re standing apart from each other and then go to one another,” McBride adds. “That, for me as a viewer, and as we were playing it out, had to be, ‘Is this a callback to that moment in his mind? Is this even real?'”

What was it like filming Daryl and Carol’s first scene together on Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol?

“That day was really chaotic,” Reedus recalls. “There were so many people and in a short amount of time, and a space that we had to extend. Every moment had to have something
happening in it. What happens is you do these long choreographed, long fight scenes, and sometimes they’re a little different every take. I kept thinking in my mind, ‘I wonder how close we’re going to get before I actually realize [it’s Carol].’ Is it gonna be mid-swing? I kept hoping that the timing gave us space to see each other and be together. It
worked out great.”

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2 air Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and ComicBook TWD on Facebook for more Walking Dead Universe coverage.

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The date is August 27, 2010: the day the world ended. Before she was Madame Genet, leader of France’s Pouvoir Du Vivant, she was Marion Genet (Anne Charrier), a janitor at the Louvre in Paris. Marion and Sabine (Tatiana Gousseff) are set to walk out as part of a national strike for health care rights, but they’re quarantined inside the museum during the early hours of the outbreak. The Louvre Pyramid becomes a prison as Marion watches her husband torn apart by the flesh-eating infected that the darkened City of Lights will come to fear as les affamès — the hungry ones.

In the present, Carol (Melissa McBride) meets the eyes of the Mona Lisa at Maison Mère, the Pouvoir base in Paris. The American claims to be a tourist stranded in Paris when the world fell, and so she’s welcomed to Maison Mère by Madame Genet. Carol and her new friend, Rèmy (François Perache), are assigned their duties in the kitchen and the stables, but they have ulterior motives: Carol hopes to find her friend Daryl (Norman Reedus), and Rèmy hopes to find his husband, Julien. They learn that the Pouvoir is preparing an attack on l‘Union de l’Espoir, but Genet doesn’t know where the Union of Hope is hiding out.

Carol and Rèmy witness chained prisoners being marched into a tunnel that leads to the Atelier, the workshop of Dr. Lafleur (François Delaive). The voyeurs watch as the prisoners are gunned down and injected with 20 milligrams of a yellow-green liquid, with Lafleur instructing his scientists to record their transition times. “There have been rumors of experiments. Some say that’s where the burners came from,” Rèmy says of the brûlant, acid-blooded walkers with a burning touch. “Mistake that got loose.” 


The test subjects seize and quickly reanimate as agitated zombies with blackened pupils and bulging red veins. When Rèmy points out that Genet is trying to make a stronger breed of walkers, Carol remarks with burning sarcasm: “Oh, great. That’s just what the world needs.” These test subjects are too amped up, so Dr. Lafleur determines they must dial down the dosage if they’re to have soldiers they can control. Fearing that Daryl and Julien will become Genet’s test subjects, Carol and Rèmy agree to split up to find them first.

Meanwhile, at the Nest at Mont-Saint-Michel, Normandy, Sylvie (Laïka Blanc-Francard) prays for God to protect Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi). She’s been taken prisoner by Losang (Joel de la Fuente) to prevent her interference with the ceremony that the Union believes will prove Laurent is immune to the bite of les affamès. Sylvie escapes, but as she tries to warn the people of the Nest that they’re going to kill Laurent, the nun is sent over the edge down to the courtyard below — and dies from the fall. Rather than eulogize Sylvie in death, Losang says, “Her faith was weak.”

At the edge of the Nest, Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) asks Daryl if she’ll like Ohio when she goes with him to America. Daryl tells her the winters are cold and the summers are nice, and that they have fireflies. As Fallou (Eriq Ebouaney) leads Daryl and Isabelle into the fortified abbey, they must hurry: Losang gets Laurent ready to step into his “spiritual role” as the prophesied messiah who will deliver them from the bite of the hungry ones. He slips a powder into Laurent’s tea and tells the boy that the Union awaits to greet their savior.

Losang tells the gathered faithful from across France, Germany, and Spain that they’ve come as pilgrims to be part of the Nest “out of a shared belief of faith in what is yet to come.” Jacinta (Nassima Benchicou), clad in ceremonial robes, brings the drugged Laurent to the courtyard as guards wrangle a hooded walker.

“We’ve had to be patient to prove that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, a future where we will no longer be vulnerable to the bite of the hungry ones. Now is the time to cast that aside and to embrace hope, to celebrate the inspiring power of our unity and love,” the hypocrite preaches. “We are all human, and even les affamés, lost to us, carry with them the memory of love. So who better to confirm our faith in Laurent than someone we’ve just lost, but who loved him dearly? And now her love will deliver us all.”

It’s a zombified Sylvie, who will have the “honor” of biting Laurent to prove to the Union that the boy can’t be turned. Before Slyvie can bite Laurent, Daryl fires a bolt into the crowd, and Losang gets away in the ensuing chaos. Daryl, Isabelle, and Fallou lead Laurent out the way they came, but it’s going to take both Isabelle and Fallou to get the lethargic teen over and down the wall. Daryl gets through the haze and instructs Laurent to lead them to their hideout at a cave in the woods. If he doesn’t make it back, he’ll come find them. Daryl shoots, stabs, and strangles his way through the tower as Isabelle and Fallou get Laurent to freedom, but he’s cornered on a narrow stairway and captured.

Meanwhile, at Maison Mère, Carol asks around about the American named Dixon. Codron (Romain Levi), beaten and bloodied after being interrogated about the location of the Nest, hears the name and scoffs. “I had him, and I let him go,” says Genet’s former Guerrier, who had his fingers severed as punishment. Carol convinces Codron to tell her where she can find her “brother” and “the only family I have left.” Codron relents, telling Carol about the island fortress on the Normandy coast. But she must hurry: if Genet finds Dixon first, he’s a dead man. Carol relays this intel to Rèmy and learns that Daryl must be at Mont-Saint-Michel a few hours drive away. She can’t convince him to leave Maison Mère without Julien, so Rèmy sobs after hugging Carol goodbye.

At the abbey, Daryl is Losang’s prisoner. The monk hoped that the Union could convince Daryl to share their faith in Laurent, but he pities the American “living without a semblance of faith.” Calling Daryl “a man alone” with “nothing to cling to,” Losang says, “Perhaps it’s easy to reject faith when you live only for yourself.” Losang is firm in his belief that Laurent will not succumb to the bite, and that the ceremony — a “public display of his light” — will restore the beliefs of those who have started to lose faith in l‘Union de l’Espoir. “Only by risking everything can we find the true meaning of faith,” Losang says. When Daryl asks what happens if he’s wrong about Laurent being their savior, he responds: “If I’m wrong? There would be no point in going on.”

Back at Maison Mère, Sabine catches Carol trying to escape with a stolen horse. Rèmy, reunited with Julien, saved his husband by giving up Carol and the location of the Nest. Genet explains to Carol that Dr. Lafleur’s research tests are to create “a new sub-type of affamè.” These Ampers are “more directable warriors” than her human Guerrier, and they will “help bring peace back to the world” as Genet establishes France’s Sixth Republic for the people.

Carol confesses the truth: that she flew from America two days ago. As Carol tells it, “I manipulated an innocent man into letting me fly in his plane under the false pretense of looking for my daughter. We had to stop in Greenland, where he was almost used as a sperm donor, and I was nearly murdered by insane environmentalists.” As for why Carol came from America to France to find Daryl Dixon, she says: “I came here to kill him.” Genet can understand Carol’s raison d’être for wanting Daryl dead, as their goals align: Genet has been after the American who sabotaged three years of research during a mutiny aboard the ship that transported him to France.

Genet tells Carol that Dixon aligned himself with a group of religious zealots, and she’s helped the Pouvoir locate their headquarters at the Nest — the one that Codron told her about. Handing over the pocket watch that Losang gave to Azlan, Genet says she’s organizing a convoy to Mont-Saint-Michel. “You want to kill Dixon yourself? I will take you to him.”

As the convoy passes the Louvre, Genet recaps her background as a janitor who would “sweep the floors of galleries full of religious paintings and wonder why the greatest artists felt compelled to depict the same violent imagery over and over again.”

“When the les affamès came, we were locked in for a week. It was there that the paintings began to make sense to me. There was one in particular. Le Deluge. A desperate family hangs in peril over a raging flood. And I realized all these scenes of apocalypse, they want to make sense of the chaos and destruction that humanity brings upon itself. The fantasy that there’s a higher power that can make things better. Prayers didn’t help us. Not then and not now.” Carol counters that everyone needs hope, but Genet says, “Religion is not about hope. It’s about control.” And l’Union de l’Espoir, she adds, “Thinks we, the masses, the small and unseen, are stupid. That their fairy tales can control us.” And that is why they must snuff out whatever flickering hope the Union has.

At the cave hideout, Fallou tells Laurent that there’s no sign of Daryl or his aunt Isabelle. The boy blames himself for Sylvie’s death and potentially Isabelle’s because of a “made up story” that made him feel special. “You are special,” Fallou tells him. “Some things are true because you believe them. The truth is in the way believing makes it easier to live.” When Laurent says that belief wouldn’t make him survive a zombie’s bite, he tells him that they all believed Losang. “Not Daryl,” Laurent remarks. “He never believed.”

The Nest, once thought to be their haven, has become Daryl and Isabelle’s prison. The amours are chained on opposite walls of a shower as they commiserate. Daryl believes they’ll get out of this — somehow — and catch up with Fallou and Laurent. She tells him to tell her a story so she can hear his voice, so Daryl unspools a tale about a guy who left home looking for something. He found himself far, far away from home, and he couldn’t get back. That’s all he ever cared about — getting back. He didn’t care about anything or anyone. Then one day, something changed. 
”‘Day-pay-ee-zon,’” Daryl says, reciting the French word she taught him: Dépaysant, that thing that makes you look at things a different way. She then asks him about the fireflies, which he says are “like little Tinker Bells.” In French, the fairy is Fèe clochette, who saves Peter Pan.

Daryl tells her that Laurent will like it in America. He can go to school and be a normal kid. And what will she do? “We can do whatever you want. We can sleep late. Take long walks, and watch the sun go down by the river,” he tells her. She says it sounds like a dream — and reaches around the corner to take his handcuffed palm in hers. In French, says: “Je t’aime.” I love you.


Outside the Nest, Genet’s Guerrier have gathered on the beach. Losang comes and retrieves Isabelle despite Daryl’s protests that she doesn’t know where Laurent is. Daryl tells Losang that Laurent is in Provence, but the ploy doesn’t work. “Isabelle has always had an open mind and heart,” Losang says to Daryl. “You, sadly, are beyond hope.” As Isabelle is dragged away, Daryl yells after her.

On the beach, Genet rallies the troops. Addressing them in French, she tells the Guerrier that they are about to become here “most devoted, the most ferocious, and the most fearless Pouvoir fighting unit.” Years of research have brought them to this day. “You will be making the noblest sacrifice as we crush the Union’s tyranny of false hope,” Genet proclaims. “In the name of liberty, equality, and fraternity. You will be remembered as heroes. Always.”

Carol’s high-school French can’t decipher what she’s saying, but she’s clued into what is about to happen as Dr. Lafleur prepares guns with the Amper serum. Genet confirms that she’s turning her Guerrier into les affamè for the greater good. “We’re ready. The question is, are you?” she asks Carol. “I’m giving you what you asked for. You’re gonna kill your friend.”

So ends chapter three in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD (and find us on Facebook) for more Walking Dead coverage.

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The Walking Dead‘s season 5 premiere proved there was “No Sanctuary” for Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and the survivors. The episode, written by Scott M. Gimple and directed by Greg Nicotero, saw the group fight their way out of Terminus after being rounded up in a train car and nearly slaughtered by cannibals. Believing “you’re the butcher or you’re the cattle,” Gareth’s (Andrew J. West) family arrived at Terminus seeking what was promised on signs leading down the tracks: “Sanctuary for all. Community for all. Those who arrive survive.”

But not all who arrived survived. A feral Rick, who warned the Termites were “screwing with the wrong people,” led a violent revolt when the exiled Carol (Melissa McBride) returned and took aim at Terminus. And just in time: a butcher was moments away from taking a baseball bat to Glenn’s (Steven Yeun) head and slitting the throats of a gagged Daryl (Norman Reedus), Bob (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.), and Rick over a trough already flowing with blood.

For all of its shocking kills and relentless brutality, the episode ended in a tender embrace between best friends Daryl and Carol, and Rick and Carl’s (Chandler Riggs) reunion with baby Judith after she was saved by Tyreese (Chad Coleman). Rick’s survivors then left the burning Terminus to rot, and in a post-credits scene, Morgan Jones (Lennie James) came across the sign that Rick changed from “Sanctuary for All” to “No Sanctuary.”

The episode, which premiered on October 12, 2014, still ranks as one of the show’s highest-rated episodes among fans and remains the most-watched episode of The Walking Dead‘s 11-season, 12-year run on AMC.

The season 5 premiere delivered series-high ratings with 17.3 million viewers and was watched by 11 million adults in the coveted 18-49 demographic. AMC reported at the time that an estimated 22 million viewers in total tuned in to the episode when accounting for time-shifted playback, making “No Sanctuary” the most highly-rated episode in cable television history.

“It was one of the most gratifying experiences that I’ve ever had,” episode director Greg Nicotero exclusively told ComicBook during an interview for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol. “I remember sitting with Scott Gimple and talking about the trough sequence and putting in the baseball bat as a tip to Negan’s impending arrival a couple seasons later.”

Before Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan brought his barbwire-wrapped baseball bat down on Glenn and Michael Cudlitz’s Abraham Ford in the even more shockingly violent season 7 premiere in 2016, also directed by Nicotero, “No Sanctuary” pushed the boundaries of the horror that audiences came to expect from AMC’s adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s comic book.

Looking back at the fifth season opener 10 years later, Nicotero reflected fondly on what are “probably the most harrowing first 10 minutes of an episode, and we got away with it.”

“I mean, I’m shocked at what we got away with,” Nicotero added. “We shot that episode in nine days, 10 days. I don’t even know how we did it, but we did it. And it really was just a great experience seeing all those stories applied in that particular episode.”

“[‘No Sanctuary’] and ‘No Way Out,’ the Alexandria invasion, Night of the Living Dead episode, I think those are two of the strongest of the series,” said Nicotero, who has been with The Walking Dead since the very beginning in 2010. Fans seem to agree: The season 6 episode “No Way Out” is ranked just behind “No Sanctuary” on the list of the best-ever episodes of The Walking Dead.

As AMC Networks’ then president Charlie Collier said in 2014: “The Walking Dead is one of those increasingly rare shows today that can command a live audience not significantly cannibalized by time-shifted viewing. Who would have thought that cannibalized television could be curtailed by cannibal-ized television?”

Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and ComicBook TWD on Facebook for more Walking Dead Universe coverage.

The post The Walking Dead Director Marks 10th Anniversary of the Show’s Most-Watched Episode: “I’m Shocked at What We Got Away With” (Exclusive) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The east coast’s biggest pop culture event is less than one week away. New York Comic Con returns to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center on Thursday, October 17th and stretches until Sunday, October 20th, running the six-figure capacity venue for its 18th year. First launching in 2006, NYCC has been annual to the autumn entertainment scene for nearly two straight decades.

“I was a fan,” ReedPop Event Manager Chris D’Lando told ComicBook. “Long before I worked here, I was at Marvel Comics in their publicity department out of New York. This will actually be, my God, my 17th New York Comic Con. I’ve been to every one since 2007, which is everyone except the first.”

D’Lando is one of the men behind the machine, as he captains the ReedPop team that is responsible for piecing together the four-day extravaganza. He has been with ReedPop for seven and a half years, wearing hats in the content department before locking into his general event management position in recent years.

“The industry has changed so dramatically in those last couple of years, incrementally, year over year. If you look back at the show in 2017 versus now, you’ll see a lot of very different things,” D’Lando explained how NYCC has evolved during his time with ReedPop. “As far as industries go, we’ve seen the rise and explosion of anime over the last couple of years. Our team has really honed in on that. We spend a lot of time looking at our post-show data after the shows are over. That’s kind of the Bible by which we dictate strategy for the next year.

“Over the last couple of years, our fans have asked a lot for more interactive programming, community programming, and late night programming. Those are sort of changes that that we have implemented over the last few years.”

That post-show data has been especially unique in recent memory. NYCC 2020 was pivoted to an online event due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2021 event remained a gradual return to in-person normalcy. 2022 saw echoes of that familiarity before last year’s event, which took place in the heart of the SAG-AFTRA strike, led to the typical film and television presence being significantly reduced.

“Thankfully, we had a good amount of time to prepare and we were still able to go forward with most of our panels intact. Out of solidarity with with striking actors and writers, they were not allowed to talk about struck work, nor did we ask them to. Those conversations ended up being more personal,” D’Lando reflected on NYCC 2023. “We’re really excited that the those two sides came to an agreement, and that not only could work resume, but we’re really excited that studios are back at the show and promoting new properties. It’s it’s a big piece of what our fans are asking for at the show. They want to see big premieres. They want announcements. To be able to bring stuff like The Penguin or Shrinking from Apple TV or Outlander in its final season back to NYCC this year is really, really exciting.”

D’Lando also highlighted franchises like The Lord of the Rings, The Walking Dead, Goosebumps, Phineas and Ferb, and House of the Dragon as having major presences at NYCC 2024.

Outside of the blockbuster panels scheduled, D’Lando stressed that the “comic” of New York Comic Con is still the event’s “lifeblood.”

“Our show is a is a pop culture show, but it’s New York Comic Con first and foremost. Comics are the lifeblood of our show. That pop culture explosion, I think, in many ways, is traced back to comics as as a medium.

“Our team that puts together Artist Alley is, in my opinion, the best in the world,” D’Lando continued, spotlighting the comic-centric area of NYCC. “Our Artist Alley is second to none this year. It’s over 500 tables some of the biggest names in the industry. It’s incredible to walk down and just see the level of talent. It’s a real melting pot of some of the most creative people you’ll ever meet.”

The pop culture presence and Artists Alley only scratch the surface of what NYCC has in store for 2024. D’Lando teased that the ReedPop team has supersized this year’s event in an effort to make the Javits Center itself the total attraction throughout attendees’ stays.

“New York City has built up a lot of a lot of stuff around the Javits Center to do, restaurants and bars, but it’s still not a really a hub area. By offering more things to do inside the building, it adds more value to the ticket,” D’Lando noted. “It makes them feel like they got their money’s worth coming for a day because, yeah, the show floor may have closed seven, but they got to go to panels until 11 o’clock. They got to go to the gaming area until 11 o’clock. Artist Alley was open a little bit later.”

As for which day’s ticket will yield the most value, D’Lando pointed to NYCC’s kickoff.

“We always say Thursday is is the best day. Thursday is really stacked,” D’Lando said, adding that Thursday NYCC tickets are still available. “Elizabeth Olsen is there on Thursday and Friday. Our guest lineup for Thursday is looking stacked. Thursday is a great day to shop on the show floor before things are sold out. Thursday is a great day to get on commission lists for people on Artists Alley. I always recommend Thursday for people, especially folks who are not super convention savvy. It’s usually the easiest day to attend.”

New York Comic-Con kicks off on Thursday, October 17th and stretches until Sunday, October 20th. Stay tuned to ComicBook for live coverage all weekend!

The post New York Comic Con: 2024’s Event Will Be “Second to None” (Preview) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Passionate cosplayers have multiple opportunities every year to unveil their latest creations honoring beloved characters, but there’s arguably no better celebration of costumes than Halloween. While various real-world conventions require travel and admission costs, Halloween levels the playing field, as people around the world can showcase their crafting and costuming skills all October long. To celebrate cosplay, ComicBook is hosting our inaugural Halloween Cosplay Contest to help spotlight our fans and their impressive creations. Not only will a handful of winners be highlighted on ComicBook’s social channels, but the grand prize winner will earn an exclusive interview with ComicBook.

Fans have two ways to enter:

• Share your best cosplay costume on Instagram — tag your photo or mention @comicbook in the caption.
• Send your photo(s) to contests@comicbook.com with the subject line: Halloween Cosplay Contest.

Fans have from now until Monday, October 28th to submit your entries that celebrate your fandoms. Whether you love Marvel or DC, anime or manga, The Walking Dead or Stephen King, we here at ComicBook welcome and honor all fandoms!

To say that cosplay has come a long way over the years would be a bit of an understatement, as what started as a casual opportunity to embrace the spirit of your favorite character has become one of the most thrilling and ambitious opportunities to showcase your skills.

While the early days of Halloween costumes for young fans were limited to plastic masks and vinyl smocks that honored the iconography of heroes, often requiring the character to be identified by text on these smocks, costumes got a bit more creative in the ’70s and ’80s. Thanks in large part to sci-fi and comic conventions, which brought together the most passionate fans in the world, cosplay began to take off as fans put intense effort into replicating the looks of their favorite characters.

This enthusiasm for cosplay would then inspire creativity in other fans, encouraging them to spend the next 12 months trying to outdo one another, all while mass-marketed Halloween costumes were growing more detailed and becoming more readily available. This meant that, while almost anyone could grab a Batman or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costume that could impress their friends, these ensembles often failed to live up to the custom-made creations that were on display at these conventions. Thanks to the Internet offering even more fans the opportunity to show off their creations without having to attend a convention, cosplayers have taken fan communities by storm, igniting even more interest in craft.

ComicBook will be looking for creativity, enthusiasm, and overall passion that our fans have when it comes to cosplay. Make sure to email your best cosplay photos to contests@comicbook.com with the subject line: Halloween Cosplay Contest or share them on Instagram and tag @comicbook to enter now through Monday, October 28th! Winners will be contacted through whatever platform they sent their submission (either Instagram DMs or email) and the winner will be announced October 30th!

Stay tuned to ComicBook’s social channels to see our winners!

Official Contest Rules

1. Contest Overview

Participants are invited to submit their best cosplay images for a chance to win. A panel of judges will evaluate the submissions and select the winner based on creativity, craftsmanship, and overall presentation of the costume.

2. Eligibility

This contest is open to individuals who are legal residents of the United States, aged 18 or older, unless an older age is required by local law. Employees, representatives, and immediate family members of the contest sponsor or affiliates are not eligible to participate.

3. Contest Period

The contest begins on October 11, 2024 at 12 p.m ET and ends on October 28, 2024 at 12 p.m. ET. All entries must be submitted by the end of the contest period.

4. How to Enter

To enter the contest, participants must:

• Submit a photo of themselves in a cosplay costume.
• Submit their entry via Instagram by tagging your photo or mentioning @comicbook in the caption OR by emailing your submission to contests@comicbook.com with the subject line: Halloween Cosplay Contest.
• Ensure the image complies with all submission guidelines (see Section 5).

No purchase necessary to enter or win.

5. Submission Guidelines

• Images must be in JPEG format and no larger than 20 MB.
• Cosplay must be appropriate for all ages; submissions containing inappropriate (including nudity), offensive, or violent content will be disqualified.
• Images must not contain minors.
• Up to 5 entries via email per person is allowed. Unlimited entries via social media. 
• By submitting an image, participants agree that the sponsor shall be granted a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free, and world-wide license to use the image(s) and your name for promotional purposes on its website and its social media channels.

6. Judging Criteria

A panel of judges selected by the sponsor will evaluate all eligible entries. Judging will be based on the following criteria:

• Creativity (40%)
• Craftsmanship (30%)
• Overall Presentation (30%)

Judges’ decisions are final and binding in all matters related to the contest.

7. Prizes

One (1) Grand Prize will be awarded to the best cosplay as determined by the judges. The Grand Prize consists of one interview and photo feature on ComicBook.com and a dedicated post across the sponsor’s social media accounts. The approximate retail value of the prize is $10.

The prize is non-transferable and cannot be exchanged for cash. The sponsor reserves the right to substitute the prize for one of equal or greater value if the advertised prize is unavailable.

8. Winner Notification

The winner will be notified via email or Instagram direct message within 5 business days of the contest end date. The winner must respond within 7 days to claim the prize. Failure to respond within this time frame will result in forfeiture of the prize, and an alternate winner may be selected at the sponsors sole discretion.

9. Disqualification

Any attempt to tamper with the entry process or the contest is strictly prohibited. Entries that do not meet the submission guidelines, or are found to be in violation of any contest rules, will be disqualified.

10. Taxes

The winner is solely responsible for all taxes and fees associated with the receipt of the prize.

11. Limitation of Liability

The sponsor is not responsible for any technical issues, lost or incomplete entries, or any other issues beyond their control. By participating, entrants agree to release and hold harmless the sponsor and its affiliates from any claims or damages arising out of participation in the contest or acceptance of any prize.

12. Sponsor

This contest is sponsored by SV Comicbook, LLC. Sponsor is not affiliated in any way with Instagram or Meta Platforms, Inc.

The post Enter ComicBook’s Halloween Cosplay Contest appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Oct. 6 episode of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol, “Moulin Rouge.” Mon amour! While Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) didn’t quite say Je t’aime in this week’s episode, “Moulin Rouge,” they did share a kiss during a romantic interlude overlooking the Bay of Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, France. Isabelle isn’t Daryl’s first love interest — that was Lynn Collins’ Leah on The Walking Dead — but the scene marked Daryl Dixon’s first onscreen kiss, as the Daryl/Leah romancing happened off-screen (in part due to being filmed during the pandemic).

The episode included scenes of Daryl teaching Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) and his aunt Isabelle to play American baseball, and Daryl inviting Isabelle and Laurent to come with him when he returns to America. After Jacinta (Nassima Benchicou) staged Laurent’s kidnapping to lure Daryl away from the Nest so that Union de L’Espoir‘s more fanatical followers could ambush the American and proceed with a ceremony to test Laurent’s immunity to zombie bites, Daryl and Isabelle had to fight their way back to the abbey with Fallou (Eriq Ebouaney). 

As they waited for low tide before they could go in and get Laurent out of the Nest, Isabelle accepted Daryl’s offer for the three of them to go home to America. She then taught him the French word dépaysant, which translates to “a nice change of scenery” that “makes you look at things a different way” in English, and Daryl leaned in and kissed Isabelle.

“The meaning of home takes on a different meaning for Daryl,” Reedus explains in AMC+’s The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol Episode Insider. “And I think these relationships start to form and these connections are made.” Adds series creator and showrunner David Zabel, “What we’ve seen in season 2 is that has deepened a bit. You absolutely see Daryl, Isabelle, and Laurent as a family unit.”

“From the beginning, there was always the hope that there would feel like a dynamic chemistry between the two of them,” Zabel adds of Daryl and Isabelle. “But it wasn’t a given, and it wasn’t a necessity. And of course, it happened, and so it made sense to us to want to give that more visual realization.”

Meanwhile, after a detour to Greenland, Carol (Melissa McBride) and Ash (Manish Dayal) landed in Paris so that Carol could track down her missing best friend. While Caryl shippers have long hoped for a Daryl-Carol romantic pairing, the show won’t be exploring a Daryl-Carol coupling or a love triangle.

When ComicBook asked Zabel about a possible Daryl and Isabelle romance as part of our first season postmortem, the showrunner said “there is a deep connection that forms between these two people over the course of this story.”

“It was very specifically meant to be drawn as an adult relationship of two people becoming connected to each other, drawn to each other in various ways, and understanding each other,” Zabel explained. “And of course, that could carry romance with it. I think that depends on the viewer in some ways, how you read into that right now.”

Zabel and Reedus wanted to avoid a “TV romance” that was “too much of a TV trope,” he added. While The Walking Dead flirted with Daryl and Connie (Lauren Ridloff) before pursuing Daryl-Leah, “There is this history that’s interesting, and I didn’t want to undermine that history or contradict it, either. So from the beginning, I think we’ve been successful in drawing the kind of relationship that we set out to draw between Isabelle and Daryl. That’s largely because of the performances of Clémence and Norman, but it was always the design that you should feel deep connection between the two of them.”

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and ComicBook TWD on Facebook for more Walking Dead Universe coverage.

The post Daryl Dixon: The Book of Carol Showrunner on That First Onscreen Daryl Kiss appeared first on ComicBook.com.

“Dear Lord, these are the things I hope for,” Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) prays. “I hope the people I care about will be safe and happy. I hope someday this feels like home. Everybody here says they love me. I see how they look at me. I know it’s not my destiny to be an ordinary child. I wish it was… but wishes are not hopes. I hope I can be the person they need me to be. But I also hope I can be the person I want to be.”

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2 episode 2, “Moulin Rouge,” begins with Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Mathis (Théo Costa-Marini) returning to the Nest after rescuing Fallou (Eriq Ebouaney) and Emile (Tristan Zanchi), who were captured by Madame Genet (Anne Charrier) and her Guerrier. As Sylvie (Laïka Blanc-Francard) embraces her secret amour, Emile, Laurent greets Daryl with a wooden dog carving.

Laurent tells Losang (Joel de la Fuente) that he hopes Daryl stays in France, but he knows he misses Carol and the rest of his family back home in America. The monk knows that Laurent is unsure of his own future at the Nest, so he tells the boy: “Doubt is the question that faith answers. You doubt because you are special, not because you aren’t.” Jacinta (Nassima Benchicou) worries that Laurent will want to leave the Nest with Daryl, jeopardizing the deliverance that Losang promised the Union of Hope. “Even among our faithful, there are doubters,” she says, urging Losang to move up the ceremony and prove the boy is as he foretold: the messiah immune to the bite of les affamés. “The answer to doubt isn’t faith,” she says, “it’s proof.”

Elsewhere, Carol (Melissa McBride) and Ash (Manish Dayal) land their plane in Greenland to fix a fuel leak. Two locals, Eun (Minami Bages) and Hanna (Maria Erwolter), welcome the Americans to Kalaallit Nunaat: the Land of the People. The Greenlanders lead Carol and Ash through green fields of Tupilag — their name for walkers taken from an old Inuit myth about a flesh-eating beast — and tell the travelers they’re the first people they’ve seen in years. Eun and Hanna were doing climate research for their PhD when the world fell 13 years ago, and they’ve been the sole inhabitants of a Greenland research station ever since. Over cooked reindeer, Hanna posits that the apocalypse is the world trying to heal itself. “Tupilag is Mother Nature fighting back,” she tells Carol. “Never screw with somebody’s mother.”

Back at the Nest, a quiet Emile is shaken, but doesn’t tell Sylvie what happened with the Guerrier. She points out that he’s not hurt, so he explains: “I made a deal with God to bring me back to you.” Meanwhile, Daryl takes a break from training Laurent in self-defense and tracking to teach him an American pastime: baseball. He tells Laurent’s aunt, ex-nun Isabelle (Clémence Poésy), that he’s skeptical of Losang’s teachings. “A kid should question things. Be skeptical. Doubt,” she says. “It’s healthy.” When Daryl asks if she has doubts about Losang’s prophecy, she replies: “Like I said, it’s healthy.”

Daryl tells the former nun that she’s “not like them,” she’s “like us.” She believes that Losang will secure Daryl his boat ride back home to America and she’ll stay at the Nest with Laurent. “There’s always doubt,” she says. “Sometimes you let faith make up the difference.” Daryl invites Isabelle and Laurent to come with him to the Commonwealth, but his entire life has led to here. To the Nest. “Everything that’s kept us going.” “Maybe that’s all it was,” Daryl tells Isa. “Something that just kept you going.”

Later that night, Isabelle discovers Laurent is missing — and signs point to the Guerrier abducting him from his room. Losang deduces that someone gave up the location of the Nest, with Isabelle suspecting that the Pouvoir are taking Laurent back to Paris, so Losang instructs the Union to follow Daryl’s lead: “La Vérité est Espoir.” (Truth is hope.) As Isabelle leaves with Fallou and Daryl to find Laurent, Emile’s guilty look outs him as the culprit who made a deal with Genet.

In Greenland, Eun accompanies Ash to repair his plane. He tells her about flying Carol to Paris to find her daughter Sophia, and how he’s never thought of having more children after the death of his son, Avi. If everyone felt that way, she tells him, “Humans would die out like we were never here.” While Carol is ambushed at the research center, Eun explains that Hanna wants civilization to end. Eun wants to save humanity, however, by reproducing. The two women have been living in isolation, so… now that Ash has landed on their island, she’s going to let nature take its course. He politely declines Eun’s indecent proposal to procreate, so she draws her gun and tells him he doesn’t have a choice.

Hanna is supposed to kill Carol while Eun makes Ash her sperm donor. But Carol recognizes Hanna is conflicted about what she’s supposed to do, so she offers Hanna a way out of Greenland in Ash’s plane. When Eun returns without Ash, she tries to talk Hanna into shooting Carol, but Hanna instead fires a bolt into Eun’s forehead and kills her. Hanna then escorts Carol through the Tupilag-filled field at night, telling her that accompanying Carol and Ash to Paris is the first time that she’s thought about the future in years. Just then, Ash shoots Hanna dead with a flare gun. “She was going to kill you,” he explains. “I had to do it.” It’s the first time he’s ever killed a person. “I’ve killed a lot of people. I remember all of them,” Carol says. “It never goes away.” With that, they take off and head to Paris.

In France, Daryl’s group tracks Laurent’s trail through the woods, but Sylvie discovers that Laurent never left the Nest. As Daryl, Isabelle, and Fallou are ambushed and almost killed by their Union escorts, Sylvie finds Laurent locked away with Losang. Emile reveals that Isabelle and Fallou weren’t supposed to be there — the plan was to lead the American away from the Nest and kill Daryl so that Laurent wouldn’t leave the Nest. “Everything the Union had fought for would be lost,” Emile explains. “Meaningless. Everything we did.” Fallou tries to talk him down, and the trio discovers that a ceremony is planned for tomorrow to prove that “Laurent is special. That his birth was a miracle. That he represents a future where we can no longer be hurt by les affamés.” At the ceremony, Laurent will not succumb to a hungry one’s bite, “And all doubt will be dispelled.” Isabelle asks Emile: “Does this look like salvation to you?” Before he can shoot Daryl, Isabelle executes Emile.

Carol and Ash land at an old racetrack just outside Paris. He wants to go with her to find her daughter, but she wants him to stay at the plane. It’s safer, and he’s going to need to fly them out of there when the time comes. He reluctantly agrees to guard the plane and track down fuel, and Carol tells him not to keep waiting if she’s not back in two weeks. With a crossbow slung over her shoulder and her recollection of high school French, Carol leaves to find Daryl. “Bonne chance,” Ash calls out. “It means ‘good luck.'” To that, Carol replies: “Au revoir!”

The Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe tower over the City of Lights, long dead and dark and decaying. Making her way into Paris, Carol comes across Pouvoir propaganda — a symbol she recognizes from the rouge, blanc, and bleu-colored French flag planted outside the Maine auto repair shop where she got a lead on Daryl’s disappearance. The posters read: Pournous (“For Us”), Unir (“Unite”), Genet Nourrit le Peuple (“Genet Feeds the People”), Genet Protège les Vivants (“Genet Protects the Living”), Contre Lamaladie (“Against Illness”), Contre l’Invasion (“Against Invasion”), and Leprenons le Pouvoir (“Let’s Take Power”). A food truck with the same symbol makes a stop, so Carol cuts into a bag of seed and follows the trail of literal breadcrumbs to outside the Grande galerie de l’Èvolution.

Carol joins the Parisians lining up for food distributed by the Pouvoir. Sabine (Tatiana Gousseff), a Guerrier officer, tells the huddled masses that it is just “a small taste of what Maison Mère offers” — if they’re willing to support Madame Genet. Carol is loaded into a truck with other volunteers and meets Rèmy (François Perache), a French former English teacher who worries about his husband on the other truck. He tells Carol that Genet is trying to restore order and start over by creating France’s Sixth Republic, and it’s hard for the starved population to argue with food and warm beds. Vive la France!

On the Normandy coast, Daryl, Isabelle, and Fallou are waiting out the tide as they look out at the Nest: once believed to be their haven, it’s now a fortress. Laurent’s prison. “All these years, I believed in that place. In Losang,” Isabelle tells Daryl. “I thought it was the one thing that would save us.” She promised her sister, Lily, that she would protect Laurent, and now he’s going to suffer the same fate as his mother: a zombie’s bite. Isabelle then tells Daryl that she and Laurent will leave with him, if the offer still stands. 

“There’s a word in French: dépaysant,” Isabelle tells Daryl. The word is difficult to translate into English, but it means “a nice change of scenery. Makes you look at things a different way.” Daryl sounds it out: “Day-pay-ee-zon. I like that.” They share a glance, and Daryl kisses Isabelle.

Inside the Nest, Losang recites the words of the French philosopher René Descartes to Jacinta: “Doubt was the origin of wisdom.” If there’s any doubt that doubt is the theme of this episode, Losang assures Jacinta that he isn’t doubting their plan. “We’ll go through with the test. It will work,” Losang says. “But we’ll still have to deal with Daryl when he comes back.” It was Jacinta who amended the order — by ordering Daryl’s assassination. “I told them the truth,” she explains. “Daryl was in the way of our mission. That you felt he would be an obstacle as long as he was around.”

Furious, Losang asks about the fates of Isabelle and Fallou. While they weren’t part of the plan, Jacinta tells him, “Your prophecy inspired these people, held them together all these years. We’ve come too far to let it all be foiled now by weakness.” When the monk asks her if this is who they are, and who they want to be, she answers: “What we want — what we all want — is to be certain. Without that… everything falls apart.”

At the Pouvoir base at Maison Mère, Sabine reports to Genet that they are preparing the Atelier (the Workshop). She is Genet’s right arm, and it could have been the man she is now torturing: Codron (Romain Levi), a former Guerrier who spared Daryl and Laurent before pointing them to the Nest. Bloodied and beaten, Codron resists giving up the location of the Nest, even as he’s tortured with a cork. “The nun, the boy, the American… you’ll tell me where they are,” Genet grins. On a nearby table is Azlan’s pocket watch, which contains an image of what Genet seeks: the Nest at Mont-Saint-Michel, Normandy.

So ends the second chapter of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD (and find us on Facebook) and follow @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for more TWD Universe coverage.

The post Daryl Dixon: The Book of Carol Recap: “Moulin Rouge” appeared first on ComicBook.com.

“Daryl in the comic series… is unlikely.” That’s what Robert Kirkman wrote in a 2012 issue of The Walking Dead when asked if Daryl Dixon — the crossbow-wielding fan-favorite played by Norman Reedus on the AMC television show — would ever appear in the Image comic book. Just one issue earlier, in The Walking Dead #98, Kirkman introduced a new character who also had a crossbow for his main weapon, also wore a sleeveless leather vest, and who also would eventually become Rick Grimes’ right-hand man: Dwight.

“Is he related to a certain someone in any way? Officially, no,” Kirkman writes in the Cutting Room Floor section of this week’s The Walking Dead Deluxe #98, which reprints the 2012 issue in color for the first time. “Since Daryl Dixon was created for the show, AMC owns Daryl outright. And since I still own TWD as a whole and actually compete with AMC on licensing, they were always very adamant that I could never do anything with Daryl in the comics. Since he was a licensing goldmine for them.”

“That’s why you never see Daryl in any of the various video games that are based on the comics, but he’s usually front and center in the games AMC makes… like Survival Instinct,” Kirkman continues, referring to the TV-based 2013 video game about the Reedus and Michael Rooker-voiced Dixon brothers. The poorly-received game served as a prequel to the first season of the television series, which introduced Daryl in a first season episode written by showrunner Frank Darabont and writers Jack LoGiudice and Charles H. Eglee.

While Daryl would never appear in the 193-issue run of The Walking Dead comic book, longtime series artist Charlie Adlard has drawn Daryl in his style, and The Walking Dead Deluxe cover artist David Finch featured a comic book version of Reedus’ Daryl (exclusively debuted by ComicBook) on the Skybound-published art book The Art of The Walking Dead Universe.

In 2018, Kirkman explained that “legal issues” and “likeness rights” prevented the AMC-owned character from making an appearance in the comics. “I would never have done it because it would feel wrong to bring the work of so many other people into the comic,” he wrote later in a 2023 issue of TWD Deluxe. “I never wanted the show to change the comic, since the comic is what made the show possible, and I worried it could turn into a snake eating its own tail.”

The Walking Dead Deluxe #98 is on sale now from Image Comics.

The post The Walking Dead: The Real Reason Daryl Dixon Isn’t in the Comics appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 3 is saying bienvenido to Stephen Merchant. AMC announced that the actor-comedian and co-creator of the original British version of The Office has joined the cast of the Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride-fronted Walking Dead spinoff, which recently started production on its third season in Spain. Details about Merchant’s mystery role remain under wraps.

The Golden Globe and Emmy-winning writer, comedian, and actor is the latest addition to a previously announced cast that includes Spanish actors Eduardo Noriega (The Devil’s Backbone, Vantage Point), Óscar Jaenada (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Hernán) and Alexandra Masangkay (Días mejores, Valley of Shadows) as series regulars. In addition to Merchant, the new season will feature Candela Saitta (Máxima, Último primer día) and Hugo Arbués (the Through My Window trilogy, Past Lies) in recurring roles.

Merchant is best known for his collaboration with Ricky Gervais on the BBC-aired version of The Office that inspired a global franchise, and for co-creating and starring alongside Gervais on the podcast-based animated series The Ricky Gervias Show, the BBC sitcom Extras, and the Karl Pilkington-starring travel docu-series An Idiot Abroad. 

Most recently, Merchant portrayed the British serial killer Stephen Port in the BBC miniseries Four Lives and Greg Dillard on The Outlaws, the comedy crime-thriller series he co-created with Elgin James. Merchant’s credits include roles in such films as Hot Fuzz, the X-Men spinoff Logan, action-thriller The Girl in the Spider’s Web, Jojo Rabbit, Locked Down, and the Florence Pugh and Dwayne Johnson wrestling dramedy Fighting with My Family, which he wrote and directed.

Daryl Dixon season 3 is based in Madrid, Spain, with extensive location shooting planned in the Galicia, Aragón, Catalonia and Valencia regions, each “providing a new and unique backdrop for the post-apocalyptic world,” according to AMC.

“We’re excited to be back on set with Norman, Melissa and this great cast, alongside a fantastic local crew in Spain, whose expertise and creative vision are pivotal in bringing these landscapes to life and adding a new culturally rich dimension to the series,” series creator and showrunner David Zabel said when announcing the Spain-set and shot third season, which is set to air on AMC and AMC+ in 2025. “We’re excited for fans to witness the reunion of these two beloved characters in season two and to continue crafting the next chapter in the ‘Caryl’ journey here in Spain.”

New episodes of season 2, titled The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol, currently air Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and ComicBook TWD on Facebook for more Walking Dead Universe coverage.

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The Walking Dead spinoffs have shipped Daryl to France, moved Maggie and Negan to New York, and followed Rick and Michonne across the country from Philadelphia to Wyoming. And in the next chapter of Daryl Dixon: The Book of Carol, the Walking Dead Universe is exploring even more new territory: Greenland. ComicBook has an exclusive clip (above) from Sunday’s “Moulin Rouge” episode, which sees travelers Carol (Melissa McBride) and Ash (Manish Dayal) make a pit stop in Kalaallit Nunaat to repair a fuel leak before continuing on their transatlantic flight to Paris.

In the clip, a crossbow-wielding Carol has a close call with the Tupilag — what the locals call walkers, taking the name from an old Inuit myth about a flesh-eating beast. While Carol and Ash are welcomed to the Land of the People by the Greenlanders Eun (Minami Bages) and Hanna (Maria Erwolter), Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) uncover a new threat at the Nest in Mont-Saint-Michel, Normandy, France.

Executive producer Greg Nicotero, who directed last week’s barn burner of a season premiere, also gave ComicBook some intel on what’s to come in the weeks ahead as part our exclusive Book of Carol premiere postmortem.

“In season one, we really concentrated 100 percent on Daryl, and we were on that journey with him. So now that we have Carol in the mix, we get a really good mix of what’s going on in France along with Carol’s journey,” Nicotero told ComicBook. “Because, of course, when we started season one, the first question everybody would ask me is: ‘How the hell did Daryl get to France?'”

While that question was ultimately answered over several episodes, the question now is: How the hell is Carol getting to France? After she tracked down her missing best friend to Freeport, Maine, in last year’s season finale, Carol lied to Ash about her dead daughter so that her new pilot friend would fly her halfway around the world to — hopefully — find Daryl in Paris.

“Knowing that Carol has found a plane, knowing that there’s going to be a journey for her to get there, and then once she does get there, she finds herself infiltrating another element of the world that Daryl has been living in,” Nicotero teased. “I really enjoy the idea that we’re seeing these two stories on a collision course. We know that, at some point, they are going to collide. We just don’t know when.”

Until then: Baaj and Iluatitsilluarisi (goodbye, and good luck). The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2 episode 2, “Moulin Rouge,” airs Oct. 6th at 9:00 pm ET/PT on AMC and AMC+.

Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and ComicBook TWD on Facebook for more Walking Dead Universe coverage.

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Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead Deluxe #98. Whether it’s an arrow through the eye or a baseball bat to the skull, death often blindsides the characters of The Walking Dead. On the television show, it was Denise (Merritt Wever) who took the crossbow-fired bolt that Dwight (Austin Amelio) intended for Abraham (Michael Cudlitz), and Abe was first at bat before Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) gave Glenn (Steven Yeun) the same fate as his comic counterpart. And like Glenn, who narrowly escaped death issues earlier at the whim of creator Robert Kirkman, Abraham almost made it out of his death issue alive. Almost. 

The Walking Dead issue #98, originally published in 2012, sees Abraham and Eugene embark on a mission together to find equipment to manufacture ammunition amid a brewing conflict with Negan and the Saviors. After Rick’s group of Carl, Andrea, Michonne, and Glenn are attacked on the road, Abraham and Eugene are ambushed by Dwight (in his first appearance). 

As Abraham gives Eugene his blessing to pursue a romantic relationship with his ex, Rosita, he’s suddenly shot by an arrow through the brain, and his corpse is gnawed on by walkers before Rick and Andrea retrieve Abraham’s body. It’s a shocking end for Abraham, and one that happened at the last minute. Despite the final page of issue #97 showing Abe and Eugene being stalked by Saviors, Kirkman had “zero plans” to have Abraham die in issue #98 before plotting the second issue of the six-part “Something to Fear” storyline.

“Abraham’s death might be my favorite death of the series. Maybe,” Kirkman writes in the “Cutting Room Floor” column in this week’s Walking Dead Deluxe #98.Kirkman goes on to explain that he would often write himself into a corner, even while having general plans for arcing out the issues ahead.

“I like having as much track laid ahead of me as possible. So I’m always plotting IFs,” Kirkman notes. “‘If I get to issue No. 30, maybe this,’ and ‘if I get to issue No. 50, maybe this.’ I leave myself options, so I always have some plans I can build to… but I’m careful to always leave myself room to just shoot from the hip and do whatever I want month to month, no matter how crazy the issue. This was one of those issues.”

“I had ZERO plans to kill Abraham prior to writing this issue,” Kirkman continues. “I wrote the final scene of issue No. 97 without any idea what would happen on page 2 of this issue. But when I sat down to do my plot breakdown … I thought, ‘Dang, this issue is kind of boring.'”

Kirkman originally plotted “a harrowing action sequence where Abraham and Eugene race back to the safety of Alexandria, and then they help fend off Dwight and his crew,” he writes. “BORING. I knew I had a lot of plans for Eugene, but I started working it out and I really didn’t have any big plans for Abraham, nothing far reaching, and luckily he wasn’t on any already-drawn upcoming covers… so killing him seemed like the right option at the time.” 

Not only was Abraham killable, but his death in issue #98 “did interesting things for Holly, Rosita, Eugene, Rick, and really just led to a bunch of different story developments, always a good sign,” Kirkman adds. “I loved the character, he really was one of my favorites… but you gotta break eggs to make a comic interesting.”

The Walking Dead Deluxe #98, reprinting the original issue in full color for the first time, is on sale now from Image Comics. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and ComicBook TWD on Facebook for more Walking Dead Universe coverage.

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Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol premiere, “La Gentillesse Des Étrangers.” “Home is wherever the people you love are,” Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) says on the season 2 premiere of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. For best friends Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride), that was the Commonwealth, the Ohio community where they settled on the eleventh and final season of The Walking Dead. But then Daryl disappeared while making a pit stop in Freeport, Maine, so Carol left home, hit the road, and tracked down her friend, only to learn he was shipped halfway around the world by the French researchers importing American walkers for experiments. 

Overseas in France, Daryl embarked on a daring rescue mission to intercept Madame Genet’s (Anne Charrier) convoy transporting Fallou (Eriq Ebouaney) and other hostages from the Pouvoir base in Paris before they could be forced to give up the location of The Nest. The mission was successful, but the Buddhist monk Losang (Joel de la Fuente) was  willing to be patient and prudent for “the greater good.” That means the prophesied messiah, Laurent, who isn’t yet ready for a mysterious ceremony, according to Jacinta (Nassima Benchicou).

Meanwhile, in Maine, Carol spotted an aircraft circling overhead and tracked the pilot — a man named Ash (Manish Dayal) — to his farm. Taking advantage of the kindness of strangers, Carol lied to Ash, claiming she needed a ride to France to find her missing daughter Sophia (who has, in fact, been dead for years).

The episode, which was directed by Greg Nicotero, was filled with callbacks to The Walking Dead season 2. Callbacks like Carol’s flashbacks to a zombified Sophia (Madison Lintz) shambling out of Hershel’s barn (in “Pretty Much Dead Already”); a white-petaled Cherokee rose, like the one Daryl gave to Carol when Sophia was lost (in “Cherokee Rose”); and a barn burning to the ground as a farm is overrun by zombies (in “Beside the Dying Fire”).

“That was, without a doubt, something that was very calculated when we built that barn,” Nicotero tells ComicBook. “We literally built the facade of the barn to match the barn on Hershel’s property because we wanted to evoke Carol’s mindset at that point.”

That meant recreating the memory of Sophia stepping out of the barn, which happens before Carol lies to Ash about her real reason for flying halfway around the world.

“We know how cunning Carol is. And I always talk about, for me, the idea that Carol is not Rambo. She’s just efficient, and smart,” Nicotero says. “If you watch her character’s evolution from season one with Ed, and then when we get into season three, and then season four, Carol starts doing things that are very questionable.” Nicotero references Carol’s murders of Karen and David and then burning their bodies to prevent further spread of a virus, which led to Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) banishing her from the prison in season 4.

“There’s a lot of things that Carol sets into motion that she really doesn’t think too much about the consequences. She just does it,” Nicotero continues. “And then [season 5 episode] ‘No Sanctuary,’ of course, that’s her only option. Her only option is to raid [Terminus] and blow up the propane tanks and get her friends out. What we’ve always seen about Carol is that she’s been efficient. She knows exactly what she needs to do to save her friends and to protect people.”

In this instance, Nicotero explains, “She’s got a lot bigger path ahead of her, because now she has to figure out how to get to Europe. And the fact that she evokes Sophia in the lie to Ash to convince him to fly her over there, I think that’s one of the most interesting moments in the episode. Because you realize that the level of desperation that Carol is willing to go to, and the fact that she herself is partially reopening those wounds.”

When Daryl and Carol exchanged goodbyes in The Walking Dead series finale, also directed by Nicotero, she seemed relatively at peace. And then she radioed Daryl while he was on the road to tell him that someone or something “came back,” but the transmission broke up before she could answer. So what happened between The Walking Dead and Daryl Dixon to set Carol on this journey?

“That’s a great question, because we never really got too deep into that,” the director says. “I always took it as maybe that Rick had come back, and that it was Rick’s return that triggered or reignited some of that trauma. When you really get into the visions of her seeing Sophia, it’s interesting, because you would have thought that she had sort of dealt with that trauma already after so many years.”

“So it definitely had to have been something that kind of reignited it,” Nicotero teases. “One thing that I had talked to Melissa about was, maybe, it’s actually the fact that she’s searching for Daryl just like Daryl was searching for Sophia. And that could have brought a lot of that back to the surface, because of the sense of loss that she was feeling and the desperation to find him. She had that desperation to find Sophia.”

Sophia’s disappearance and death also left its mark on Daryl, and Nicotero agrees with the suggestion that Daryl is trying to put distance — both literally and figuratively — between himself, Laurent, and Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) by boarding the next available boat back to America.

“Daryl is a unique character in the way that he enters the situation,” Nicotero says. “He changes the people that he’s met, and the people change him. In the end of season one, when he’s on the beach, he’s struggling with the idea that he’s bonded with this little kid. And so I definitely think that that plays into it, his desire to reunite with his family. But he finds himself, in that particular instance, that he’s got a new family and new responsibilities between Isabelle, and Laurent, and Sylvie. So he finds himself in a situation where he can’t quite extract himself yet, because he has those responsibilities. And that’s what I love about the character.”

Read our post-premiere breakdown with Melissa McBride about Carol’s return and stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and ComicBook TWD on Facebook for more Walking Dead Universe coverage. New episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+.

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Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol premiere, “La Gentillesse Des Étrangers.” A mother’s love knows no bounds, but boundaries were crossed on Sunday’s premiere episode of Daryl Dixon season 2. First, after appearing in the final scene of last year’s season finale, Melissa McBride’s Carol continued her search for Norman Reedus’ Daryl in Freeport, Maine, where her best friend disappeared before he was transported by boat halfway across the world to France. Carol came across an abandoned boatyard that seemed to be a dead end — until she met a kind stranger named Ash (Manish Dayal), a pilot and parent grieving the death of his seven-year-old son, Avi.

Carol tracked Ash’s single-engine aircraft to his farm and presented herself as a hapless transient in need of help after crashing her car, a facade she maintained even after the opening of a barn door triggered a traumatic memory: that of her little girl, Sophia, stepping out of Hershel’s barn as a walker in The Walking Dead season 2 episode “Pretty Much Dead Already.”

After learning that Ash’s son died because he failed to protect him “like a parent is supposed to protect a child,” Carol lied to Ash when asked about her own child. Carol claimed she lost contact with Sophia after her father took her on an overseas excursion to visit relatives in Paris just before the outbreak 13 years earlier, and was visibly conflicted about manipulating Ash into flying her to France under false pretenses. 

“It was my only option. I couldn’t do nothing,” Carol said later in the episode, still pretending not to know her daughter is dead. When asked why she’s only now making the journey, she answered: “Couldn’t keep waiting, feeling stuck. I had to move forward. I had to try.” The episode ended with Carol’s secret intact and Ash piloting the plane headed for France, and it’s a secret that will hang in the air as Carol works through “dealing with some things that, over the years of The Walking Dead journey, that she has experienced.”

“That world never slows down,” McBride tells ComicBook. “It never has slowed down until Commonwealth. She’s going to seek out her friend. He hasn’t come back yet, and she really needs her friend right now.” As for what it was that stirred up old ghosts — Carol mentioned over the radio last season that someone or something “came back” — McBride teases: “I’m excited for the fans to see her dealing with some of the past trauma, talking about things she’s never talked about.”

The Greg Nicotero-directed premiere not only recreated the Sophia barn scene from “Pretty Much Dead Already,” but incorporated flashbacks from The Walking Dead‘s “Cherokee Rose” episode that can be traced back as the beginning of Caryl: the bond between the two characters that outlasted the flagship and spawned the Walking Dead Daryl-Carol spinoff. In bringing Carol full circle back to Sophia, Nicotero points out, “She’s searching for Daryl, just like Daryl was searching for Sophia. And that could have brought a lot of that back to the surface — the sense of loss that she was feeling and the desperation to find him.”

Adds McBride, Carol’s visions of Sophia “play a lot into the rest of the season in her search for her friend.”

“In a way, Daryl is such a touchstone for her. He’s been there from the beginning,” McBride explains. “Him not having come back yet — she cannot lose him, too. And I think that brings up a lot of this that she’s feeling and experiencing in Commonwealth, that she’s just got to go on this mission to find him. And then things unfold. Him not being there is a great catalyst for that to come up, when it does.”

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and ComicBook TWD on Facebook for more Walking Dead Universe coverage.

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The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 1 recap: Adrift at sea after a mutiny aboard a French cargo shiptransporting genetically-mutated walkersacross the Atlantic, Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) washed ashore in Marseille, France. He encountered the nun Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) and Union de l’Espoir (Union of Hope), which recruited the marooned American to deliver Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) to safety at The Nest in Mont-Saint-Michel, Normandy. Believing the boy to be immune to zombie bites and the cure to les affamès (“the hungry ones”), the Union sought to protect him from Madame Genet (Anne Charrier) and her Guerrier: warriors for Pouvoir Du Vivant (Power of the Living), behind the zombie experiments that Genet plans to unleash and usher in France’s Sixth Republic. The first season ended with a boat arriving to take Daryl back home — just as Laurent needed saving on the beach outside The Nest.

In Sunday’s “La Gentillesse Des Étrangers” season premiere of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol, two weeks have passed since Daryl stayed behind in France. He’s unsure if The Nest is where he’s supposed to be, but Laurent recites the words of the children of Ècole Maternelle Simone Veil: “Home is wherever the people you love are.” Daryl has been training Laurent to protect himself from walkers as he waits for the Union’s leader, Losang (Joel de la Fuente), to arrange another ride home. The Buddhist monk is concerned about the impact of repeated violence on the boy, who is “meant for much more.”

The Union receives word that Genet’s Guerrier captured hostages in an attempt to extract the location of The Nest, including their allies Fallou (Eriq Ebouaney) and Emile (Tristan Zanchi), who helped Isabelle and Sylvie (Laïka Blanc-Francard) secure passage out of Paris. A prudent and pacifistic Losang doesn’t want to risk going on the offensive despite Daryl’s warnings that Genet will have them killed if they don’t give up the abbey. 

Confiding in Isabelle, Daryl says, “I don’t know if this is the place I’m supposed to be.” She thinks she could be happy living there with her nephew, Laurent, but Daryl has doubts. “I keep thinking about all the people I left behind,” he tells her. “Wondering if they’re still thinking about me.”

Halfway around the world, in Freeport, Maine, Carol has tracked down Daryl’s last known location: an auto repair shop outfitted with a French flag. Carol, posing as an unassuming “friendly” with the broken-down motorcycle she got from Mick, reclaims Daryl’s crossbow and gets Jones (Gilbert Glenn Brown), Grady (Craig Gellis), and Drew (Tercelin Kirtley) to give up what they know about her missing friend. All they know is that the transient Dixon got himself thrown on a boat to France for a free European vacation, which Carol points out sounds like bullsh-t. Pointing to the Pouvoir flag, Jones explains the French came to them to round up American walkers, paid them, and left on the only boat they’ve seen in years. Carol’s search for Daryl then brings her to a nearby boatyard on a beach littered with rotting, washed up boats.

Her search at a dead end, Carol hears the sound of a small plane circling overhead and, distracted, crashes into an old drive-in movie theater sign. Carol tracks the plane to the perimeter of a farm encompassed by a motorized fence, and pretends to get stuck like an animal in a trap. “You seem like a really nice person, and I’d like to think that, even still, we can rely on the kindness of strangers,” she tells Ash (Manish Dayal), who offers to patch her up and send her on her way. The farm sometimes suffers power outages because of a faulty generator, which powers the fence and locking mechanisms. Carol is hurt and it’s nighttime, so Ash kindly lets her stay in the barn on his property. 

Ash opens the barn doors, triggering a traumatic memory: when Carol’s lost daughter, Sophia, walked out of the barn at the Greene farm (in the season 2 episode “Pretty Much Dead Already”). As zombie Sophia steps toward her mother as she did all those years ago, a gunshot rings out that jolts her back to the present. Instead of a barn full of walkers, Carol sees the plane. Even though the noise attracts the dead, Ash flies the plane at the same time every day “just to get up above everything for a little while.” When flyboy takes off at his scheduled time the next day, a snooping Carol comes across a well-kept grave inside a greenhouse, unaware that a power outage has allowed walkers to flood into the now-unlocked gates.

Carol narrowly escapes the throng of walkers inside the greenhouse, and emerges through the roof just in time to see Ash return from his flight. Carol attempts to explain that she was curious about him, and if she knew him better they could become friends. “That’s something that I’ve been missing,” she admits. “A friend.” Ash’s anger subsides as he tells her about his son, Avi Patel, nicknamed “A.P.,” who died when he was seven years old. Ash sits at his son’s grave at the same time every day, expressing remorse for letting his son wander off and for “not protecting him like a parent is supposed to protect a child.” Avi loved planes, so Ash restored a crashed Beechcraft and figured out how to fly — not to fly anywhere in particular, “Just up.”

The kind stranger cooks Carol dinner, but the sight of a familiar flower triggers another flashback: when Daryl gave her a Cherokee Rose back at the farm, when she still had hope they would find Sophia. As legend goes, when the Native Americans were forced off their land on the Trail of Tears, “The Cherokee mothers were grieving and crying so much, ’cause they were losing their little ones along the way from exposure and disease and starvation. A lot of them just disappeared. So the elders, they said a prayer, asked for a sign to uplift the mothers’ spirits, give them strength and hope. The next day this rose started to grow right where the mothers’ tears fell.” That Cherokee Rose bloomed for her little girl — and so bloomed Daryl and Carol’s friendship.

Carol lies, telling Ash that her husband, Ed, took Sophia to visit relatives in France just before the outbreak. She hasn’t seen or heard from her since. Ash realizes that Carol wants him to fly her to France to find her daughter, so she says: “If you knew Avi was out here, wouldn’t you do anything, whatever it took, to find him?” The next day, Carol leaves the farm — alone.

In France, Losang wields a jō as he practices Aikido — the self-defense martial art that is the Art of Peace. The Union has learned that Genet is transporting the captives from Maison Mère in Paris to another facility, so Mathis (Théo Costa-Marini) is going to lead a team to intercept the convoy. Losang reminds Daryl that the Union is a pacifist movement and “we resist violence,” to which Daryl responds, “Same here. When I can.” Losang uses a jō not as a weapon, but to prepare in case he might need a weapon. He then instructs Daryl to bring their people back safely.

In Maine, Ash goes after Carol and tells her, “I would do anything to find Avi. I mean, what parent wouldn’t? But that’s not the question. The question is, would you search for him? Would you give up everything to look for somebody you haven’t met?” Carol answers: “If there was hope of finding them alive, then… yes.” They’ll be flying blind across the ocean with no communication, no weather forecast, and no idea what’s waiting on the other side, but Carol says it’s her only option. “I couldn’t do nothing,” she tells Ash. Why now? What changed? “Couldn’t keep waiting. Feeling stuck. I had to move forward. I had to try,” Carol says, so the kind stranger will try with her. The plan is to head north and hug the coast, make a pit stop in Greenland to minimize their time over the open sea, and switch out the tanks with the cache of homemade ethanol he keeps in the barn.

Carol claims she has an address for Ed’s aunt where Sophia was staying in Paris, so that’s where they’ll start. Ash is hopeful her daughter is still there, but Carol, really talking about Daryl, is tempering expectations. “I have to remind myself there’s a chance she won’t be,” she says. “She may not even still be alive.” Ash, still hopeful, tells her, “She could be. I’m glad you still have that.” Asked about his own reservations leaving the farm and Avi, Ash explains that he didn’t leave the house for months when Avi died. Then when he did, he found the plane, and it saved him. “If you’re not moving forward,” Ash says, “then you’re dying.”

On the other side of the world, Daryl and Mathis have laid a tripwire to trigger an explosion to blow out the tires of Genet’s convoy as it passes through a small French village. Meanwhile, back at Nest, Jacinta (Nassima Benchicou) tries to get Losang to move up a ceremony because he’ll “never win them over,” and “certainly not the American.” Losang counters that the boy isn’t ready, and as he looks over at Laurent playing chess with Sylvie, Jacinta presses him further: “He’s not? Or you’re not?”

Switching between America and France, Carol and Ash are forced to accelerate takeoff during a storm, and Daryl and Mathis move on the Guerrier convoy. A lightning strike short circuits the electric fence, igniting the ethanol-filled barn as walkers flood onto the farm. At the same time, the tripwire fails to blow, so Daryl fires on the truck, killing the driver, and sending Genet’s convoy crashing onto its side as a gunfight erupts between the Union and the Pouvoir. Ash gets the plane off the ground through their makeshift runway besieged by walkers, and Daryl rescues Fallou and Emile from the truck just as a bloodied Genet crawls out of the wreckage.

“I should have known,” she laughs as Daryl reloads his rifle. “Angels always send their most vicious demon to do their dirty work.” Daryl goes to shoot Genet, but the explosive device detonates, and she escapes in the chaos. Carol and Ash, airborne, have escaped the zombie-invaded farm and are up above the storm. “There’s nothing to be afraid of up here,” Ash says, telling Carol tolook to see sunrise breaking through the clouds. Carol, spirits lifted, and her strength and hope renewed, smiles as the plane charts a course for France.

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and ComicBook TWD on Facebook for more Walking Dead Universe coverage.

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Melissa McBride’s Carol Peletier returns on Sunday’s season premiere of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol, which tracks her journey overseas to find the only other season 1 character who lasted the entire 11-season run of the original show: Norman Reedus’ Daryl Dixon. While the next chapter in the book of Daryl and Carol will play out in a foreign country, Carol’s story almost ended at a Georgia prison in season 3, where it was IronE Singleton’s T-Dog who died instead when he saved Carol from a fate similar to her counterpart in the comics.

“I was dead set against [Carol’s death], because I thought it would be a greatstory to see a person who came from abuse become the hero and not in aneasy way, that she herself had to struggle with the power that shefound,” The Walking Dead chief content officer Scott M. Gimple said in 2019. “Carol’s great story is that she found that shewas strong, she found she had this superpower, but then it wouldn’t beeasy. It wasn’t happy ever after after that — that she had responsibilityand there was a weight to that strength that she found.”

In The Walking Dead comic book by Robert Kirkman and artists Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard, Carol is introduced in issue #3 as a widow and the mother of a young daughter, Sophia. After Rick Grimes reunites with his family at a small camp outside Atlanta, Sophia mentions to Carl that her daddy is dead, and Carol later tells the group that her husband died by suicide at the start of the outbreak. (The show included Carol’s abusive husband, Ed Peletier, who dies when he’s devoured by zombies during an attack on the campsite.)

Carol befriends Rick’s wife, Lori, and becomes romantically involved with Tyreese after the group takes refuge on the Greene family farm outside of the city. (Unlike the television show, Sophia isn’t lost on the highway, and the walkers in Hershel’s barn are let loose much earlier — in issue #11.) The group survives on the road until Dale and Andrea come across the prison (in issue #12), and Carol is initially optimistic that they could make a new life at the prison. She tells Lori that her life is almost better post-apocalypse, and Tyreese is better than her husband ever was. Carol’s happiness is short lived, however, when she catches her boyfriend cheating on her with a new arrival to the prison: Michonne.

Carol breaks up with Tyreese and attempts suicide by cutting her wrists (issue #22). Carol kisses Rick (issue #24) after he’s injured fighting Tyreese, and she becomes increasingly dependent on Rick and a pregnant Lori. She confesses to Lori she’s become a “basket case” since the end of her relationship with Tyreese, and then expresses remorse over Sophia witnessing her suicide attempt (issue #25). While Rick is out tracking down a helicopter with Michonne and Glenn, Carol confides in Lori, telling her: “I kinda want to marry you.” Carol propositions Lori with a polyamorous relationship where Rick, Lori, and Carol could raise Sophia, Carl, and the new baby together (issue #26).

Lori tells Carol they’ve grown close over the last seven months, but ultimately rejects her “insane proposal” (issue #27). When Rick fails to return after two days — he’d been captured by the Governor of Woodbury — Lori mistakes Carol’s attempt to comfort her for another romantic pass and reacts in anger (issue #30). Rick, Michonne, and Glenn eventually escape from Woodbury and return to find the prison overrun by walkers, but they reclaim the prison with the help of new arrivals from Woodbury. That includes Alice, a nurse who Carol takes a liking to while setting up the prison hospital for Lori to give birth (issue #37).

After Alice delivers Lori’s baby, Carol confides in her that she can’t be alone. “I can’t handle it. It kinda drives me crazy,” Carol says. “I was that way even before the end of the world.” She married Sophia’s father because she didn’t want to be alone, even though he sometimes hit her (issue #41). Carol abruptly asks Lori if she’d take care of Sophia if something were to happen to her, and aggressively approaches Hershel’s 19-year-old son, Billy, for sex.

Carol then talks to a tied-up walker in the prison courtyard, telling her the group has lost respect for her since she attempted to take her own life. Lori has been distant since Carol’s polyamorous proposition, and now, “Everyone thinks I’m crazy,” she tells the walker (issue #41). “I don’t really have anyone to talk to, so I figured I’d introduce myself. I’m Carol. I really hope you like me.”

Carol lets the walker bite her neck, and as she succumbs to blood loss, her last words to the group are: “Just let me die.” A zombified Carol quickly reanimates, so Andrea shoots her in the head (issue #42). Carol’s death leaves Sophia catatonic, but the group soon suffers another devastating loss when the Governor returns and attacks the prison. 

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and ComicBook TWD on Facebook for more Walking Dead Universe coverage.

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The French word “dépaysant” means “a nice change of scenery,” the Parisian nun Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) tells the American Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) on The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol. “It makes you look at things a different way.” Daryl and Carol (Melissa McBride) were the last two remaining characters from the first season still with The Walking Dead by the end of its 11-season run on AMC, and now the fan favorites are the last to get their own Walking Dead spinoff in a new setting following Maggie and Negan (in The Walking Dead: Dead City) and Rick and Michonne (in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live).

When the Walking Dead Daryl and Carol series returns with its sophomore season premiere (September 29th on AMC and AMC+), two weeks have passed since Daryl delivered Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) to the Union de l’Espoir at the Nest: the Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey in Normandy, France. “I don’t know if this is the place I’m supposed to be,” Daryl tells Isabelle, but he’s stranded there until Union leader Losang (Joel de la Fuente) can arrange another boat ride back home to the Commonwealth in Ohio. 

As Daryl questions whether the people he left behind are still thinking about him, Isabelle begins to question Losang’s motives and his religious dogma that Laurent — who was born to a zombie-bitten mother at the onset of the zombie apocalypse 13 years earlier — is immune to bites as the religious movement’s prophesiedmessiah. This “false hope” makes the Union a target for Madame Genet (Anne Charrier) and her Pouvoir Du Vivant, an autocratic movement that aims to create a new France by unleashing an army of Ampers: a stronger and faster breed of amped-up Les affamés (walkers) engineered in a lab.

Meanwhile, halfway around the world, Carol has tracked down her missingfriend to Freeport, Maine, where she meets a kind stranger: a pilot named Ash (The Resident‘s Manish Dayal). Carol convinces him to fly her to France under false pretenses, and by the end of the Greg Nicotero-directed first episode, Daryl and Carol are set on separate paths that will inevitably intersect as they are connecté et dépaysé (both connected and disoriented) in foreign surroundings. It’s a spoiler to reveal when Daryl and Carol reunite over the course of the six-episode season, but rest assured that fans will be satisfied (and teary-eyed) when the long-awaited Caryl reunion finally happens in the most emotional scene of the season. (All six episodes were made available to critics.)

Showrunner David Zabel (who co-wrote a 2006 episode of ER that earned him a Humanitas Prize, awarded to writers “whose work explores the human condition in a nuanced, meaningful way”) and the Daryl Dixon writers’ room have a natural ability to tap into the intrinsic humanity at the core of the zombie drama, which was always about the living and not the living dead. If Daryl and Carol are the beating heart of The Walking Dead, Reedus and McBride are the soul. 

While the two characters go all the way back to the first season in 2010, the “Caryl” relationship as we know it didn’t start to form until Season 2. Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol includes some well-placed flashbacks to the Season 2 episodes “Cherokee Rose” and “Pretty Much Dead Already,” two essential episodes that forged the unbreakable bond between Daryl and Carol — both survivors of abuse — after the disappearance and death of Carol’s young daughter, Sophia (Madison Lintz). It’s a loss that has haunted Carol ever since, and as she grapples with these ghosts from the past, Carol’s emotional turmoil proves to be a riveting showcase for the incomparable McBride. And Reedus — who has always brought sensitivity and vulnerability to a character who was conceived as “a mini-Merle,” fleshing out his layers over 11 seasons — delivers another understated and compelling performance that makes Reedus and McBride the perfect pairing.

In an interview with ComicBook, TWD Universe chief content officer Scott M. Gimple likened the new season to “an indie French horror movie.” It’s an apt comparison, because The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon is like nothing else on television. A Walking Dead show with French-language subtitled dialogue? Beautifully shot cinematic landscapes, natural lighting, and on-location shoots across the French countryside? And between amped-up walker kills and a one-shot action sequence in Episode 3 — a knife-hurling, neck-snapping, guts-stabbing, bone-breaking, breathless melee that is more like a fight scene out of 2003’s Oldboy than any fight scene ever staged on The Walking Dead — the season is as action-packed as it is artsy. Mon Dieu!

This is an adrenalized, action-heavy season that foregoes much of the religious undercurrent of the more measured and faith-based first season, but its balanced mix of heartfelt drama and heart-pounding zombie action means Daryl Dixon is more epic than ever. Even if the season is a layover on the way to the upcoming Spain-set and shot Season 3, the new chapter in the book of Daryl and Carol is dépaysant.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol premieres Sunday, September 29th on AMC and AMC+.

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Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride are back as Daryl and Carol on The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol. Season 2 of the Walking Dead spinoff picks up where October’s first season finale left off: with Daryl stranded overseas in France, and Carol embarking on a mission halfway around the world with a kind stranger to find her best friend. In the new season, Daryl and Carol “confront old demons while she fights to findher friend and he struggles with his decision to stay in France, causingtension at the Nest,” per the logline.

Keep reading below for more on The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2 release date, the episode release schedule, and how to stream the Walking Dead Daryl and Carol series (including for free or at a discounted price).

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2 Release Date and Time

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol premieres Sunday, Sept. 29th, at 9 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. PT on AMC and AMC+. The super-sized premiere includes The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon The Return, a new one-hour special previewing the season ahead, at 10:12 p.m. ET / 7:12 p.m. PT

How to Watch The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2 Online Without Cable

Cord cutters can stream Daryl Dixon on the AMC+ app, which is available for download on smart TVs and other devices. AMC+ is alsoavailable via Apple TV Channels, Amazon Prime Video Channels, and TheRoku Channel.

AMC+ prices start at $4.99/month for the ad-supported plan and $8.99/mo. for ad-free. Subscribers can save on an annual ad-free AMC+ plan by purchasing a 12-month subscription for $83.88 (plus tax).

Watch The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2 Trailer

How to Watch The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon The Book of Carol Online With a Free AMC+ Trial

New subscribers will be offered a 7-day free AMC+ trial when subscribing at amcplus.com or on the AMC+ app, which can be downloaded to smart TVs and other devices. AMC+ is also available via Apple TV Channels, Amazon Prime Video Channels, and The Roku Channel.

Other titles available on AMC+ include the hour-long special The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Return, and the streaming-exclusive The Walking Dead: Best of Daryl and The Walking Dead: Best of Carol episode collections.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2 Episodes Release Schedule

The new season spans six episodes, which will air through the season 2 finale on Nov. 3rd.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2 Episode 1: “La gentillesse des étrangers” (Sunday, Sept. 29th)

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2 Episode 2: “Moulin Rouge” (Sunday, Oct. 6th)

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2 Episode 3: “L’Invisible” (Sunday, Oct. 13th)

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2 Episode 4: “La Paradis Pour Toi” (Sunday, Oct. 20th)

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2 Episode 5: “Vouloir, C’est Pouvoir” (Sunday, Oct. 27th)

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2 Episode 6 (Season Finale): “Au Revoir Les Enfants” (Sunday, Nov. 3rd)

Walking Dead Daryl Dixon Season 2 Cast

Returning cast members from the first season include Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon, Clèmence Poésy as Sister Isabelle, Louis Puech Scigliuzzi as the prophesied messiah Laurent, Laïka Blanc-Francard as Sister Sylvie, Anne Charrier as Madame Genet, Romain Levi as Codron, Eriq Ebouaney as Fallou, Joel de la Fuente as Losang, and Melissa McBride as Carol, who appeared for the first time in this series at the end of the season 1 finale.

New cast members include Manish Dayal (The Resident) as Ash Patel, Nassima Benchicou (Emily in Paris) as Jacinta,and Tatiana Gousseff (Doc Martin) as Sabine.

Where to Stream The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 1 Online

The six-episode first season of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon is currently available to stream now on AMC+, The Roku Channel, and Spectrum On Demand. The complete first season is also available to own on Blu-ray and DVD, or digitally via online retailers like Apple TV+, Fandango at Home (formerly Vudu), YouTube TV, Amazon Prime Video, the Google Play Store, and the Microsoft Store.

Will There be The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 3?
AMC announced The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 3 started production in Spain in August and will film in Madrid and the Galicia, Aragón, Catalonia and Valencia regions. The currently-shooting third season will air in 2025.

Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and ComicBook TWD on Facebook for more Walking Dead Universe coverage.

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The second season of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol has unveiled a new teaser trailer and poster. The series is one of the many spinoffs of The Walking Dead, the zombie apocalypse franchise that has captivated audiences since its debut in 2010. Two of the most popular characters in The Walking Dead history are Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride), so it was only natural that AMC Networks would choose those two characters to headline their own show. We’re only weeks away from the return of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol, and now fans can get a look at what’s in store.

The teaser trailer for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol finds our two leads separated, with Carol in search of Daryl. Reedus’ character takes out a swath of zombies who try to attack him, and Peletier’s Carol also has attacking zombies to contest with. As the trailer states, the saga to reunite Daryl and Carol continues. You can take a look at The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol teaser below.

AMC plans super-sized premiere for The Walking Dead spinoff

The upcoming second season of the France-set Walking Dead spinoff starring Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride, will premiere as part of a super-sized event on AMC and AMC+ on Sunday, Sept. 29th from 8pm ET/PT to 10pm ET/PT. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Return, an hour-long special looking ahead to the new season, will precede the “La gentillesse des étrangers” season premiere, which follows Reedus’ Daryl and McBride’s Carol on their separate journeys thousands of miles apart.  

AMC+ subscribers will also have exclusive access to The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon at San Diego Comic-Con special — featuring this year’s Comic-Con panel with Reedus and McBride, where the network announced a season 3 renewal set and shot in Spain — starting on Sept. 22nd.

What is The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol about?

The new season picks up where The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon left off, following fan-favorite characters Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride). They both confront old demons while she fights to find her friend and he struggles with his decision to stay in France, causing tension at the Nest. Additionally, Genet’s (Anne Charrier) movement builds momentum, setting Pouvoir on a violent collision course with the Union of Hope in the fight for France’s future.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol also stars Clémence Poésy, Louis Puech Scigliuzzi, Laika Blanc Francard, Charrier, Romain Levi, Eriq Ebouaney and Joel de la Fuente and is executive produced by showrunner David Zabel, Scott M. Gimple, Reedus, McBride, Greg Nicotero, Angela Kang, Brian Bockrath, Daniel Percival, Jason Richman and Steve Squillante.

The second season premieres Sunday, September 29 at 9:00 pm ET/PT on AMC and AMC+. You can check out two posters for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol starring Daryl Dixon and Carol Peletier below.

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