‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’ Can’t Shake ‘The Last of Us’ Comparisons

Since the dawn of The Walking Dead, Daryl Dixon has been more than a fan favorite. For some, to love him has long been a way of life, espoused through custom T-shirts, fan petitions, and battle cries like, “If Daryl dies, we riot.” A compellingly reformed antihero and the ultimate zombie-fighting champion, our poncho-loving, bare-biceped king has always been a star—even if he was never the star. Now, 13 years after the flagship show’s debut, he’s gotten his own spinoff. But does The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon actually do Norman Reedus’s character justice?

Well, yes and no. Daryl Dixon does offer its eponymous protagonist the showcase he’s long deserved, and it’s particularly refreshing to see his emotional development throughout his own series. (Also, we’ve replaced his usual crossbow with a mace—fun!) The Walking Dead often preferred to showcase Daryl in action, keeping his interior world mostly hidden behind the “strong-but-silent-type” veneer. The new spin-off examines his trauma, albeit often implicitly, by placing him alongside a young child he must escort to safety. Then again… doesn’t this sound a little familiar?

There’s no escaping the fact that this show shares a zombified lion’s share of its DNA with HBO’s undead phenomenon The Last of Us. Once again, we have a gruff, tough guy escorting a precious, Chosen child to safety—although this time, we at least get the refreshing addition of killer nuns, as Daryl and his ward, Laurent, make their way to a sanctuary called “The Nest.” Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, executive producer and TWD stalwart Greg Nicotero said that he and his team were “deep into production” by the time The Last of Us came out. “I remember watching the first episode of The Last of Us and going, ‘Ummm… guys?’” (That said, as an undead aficionado, one must assume he’d at least heard of the video game, right?)

Then again, escort missions are a pretty common trope in the zombie genre, and in genre films more broadly. (Anyone remember Logan?) So, too, are grown-man-bonding-with-small-child stories. Daryl Dixon might not be reinventing the wheel, but in a broad sense, neither was The Last of Us. What really matters, then, is execution.

AMC’s spin-off is capable enough, and the French setting provides a somewhat distinct feel; we get a fun fight scene right in front of the ruins of the Eiffel Tower, at least. There’s some fun irony to be mined from dropping Daryl Dixon—a character who basically screams “America” with a capital “A”—overseas, to France no less. It takes just one episode for a desperate Frenchman to reference the U.S. fighting with France in World War II in his cries for help; Daryl tells him “there ain’t no countries no more.” In another, Daryl rejects a plea for mercy from a reprehensible American ex-pat, spitting back, “I ain’t your fuckin’ brother.”

Reedus himself is in fine form, whether he’s bludgeoning his way through action scenes or screaming in despair at Laurent, a preternaturally intelligent and empathetic kid who nevertheless seems to live to mess things up. Co-star Clémence Poésy was also a brilliant choice for the role of Isabelle Carriere—a devout nun whose faith, we quickly find out, was hard-won.

As a whole, however, Daryl Dixon could use a little more panache. This is a Nicotero production, so the zombies and gore are, of course, on point. The “burner” zombies, especially, make a frightening new foe—which almost makes up for how dull most of our human foes tend to be. Anne Charrier is chilling as the militaristic autocrat Marion Genet, a master of unsettlingly calm menace, but our other bad guys are all pretty forgettable. Also, it simply must be said that our child hero is pretty insufferable—a proud tradition for the Walking Dead franchise, which seems to love saddling us with obnoxious kids.

All of this feels like a far cry from the original plan for this spin-off—which initially co-starred Melissa McBride as Daryl’s BFF Carol Peletier, before she announced her exit from the project last spring. Back when that plan was still in motion, Reedus promised fans “a different type of show… about the two of us going to see who’s left in the world.” But even putting aside McBride’s exit, Daryl Dixon also seems to defy the synopsis released this January—which said that, after arriving in France, our hero “struggles to piece together” how he got there.

More than anything, McBride might be what this series needed the most to really feel alive. As compelling as some of its individual performances might be, Daryl Dixon is starved for the crackling chemistry Reedus and McBride developed for more than a decade. Carol was not as popular as Daryl was at the start of The Walking Dead, but by the end, she, too, had grown a lot—enough to be a fellow fan favorite and hero of many an episode. With any luck, we’ll see these two reunited yet—and in the meantime, we’ll always have Paris.