This review contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 3, episode 5.
Last week, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon set up an interesting new plotline: Roberto stole a truck to reunite with Justina, and Daryl and Carol headed into hostile territory to save him. It seemed the search for Roberto would take up the rest of the season, but they literally find him — and I’m not exaggerating here — less than two minutes into episode 5. They find a couple of outlaws dangling him from a bridge into the claws of a horde of walkers. They follow Roberto’s trail, shoot the guys off the bridge, and cut him down before the opening credits.
Within 10 minutes, they’re back in Solaz, safe and sound, and the status quo resumes. It’s massively disappointing, and it’s indicative of a larger storytelling problem in season 3. The narrative keeps playing out in frustrating stops and starts. Every time we’re introduced to an exciting new character or storyline, it either turns out to be anticlimactic or gets wrapped up much too quickly.
Stephen Merchant’s character was a great new addition to the cast, and post-apocalyptic London was a fun new locale to explore, but they both lasted less than a single episode. At the end of the season 3 premiere, it was implied that Carol had been abducted by the local villains. But at the start of the next one, it was revealed that she’d just wandered a bit further down the road. The writers have so many good ideas, but it’s like they’re afraid to explore them.
Daryl Dixon Season 3 Can’t Settle Into A Lane
It Has A Lot Of Good Ideas With No Follow-Through
Once they get back to Solaz, Daryl and Carol split up once again. When Carol joined Daryl in France last season, the spinoff got infinitely better. Norman Reedus’ on-screen dynamic with Melissa McBride is unparalleled. It’s the reason The Walking Dead‘s writers made Daryl and Carol friends in the first place; that wasn’t part of the original plan, but these actors’ chemistry was undeniable. But season 3 keeps breaking them up. While Carol is making friends in Solaz, Daryl is investigating the town’s sinister secrets alone. While Daryl is out looking for boat parts, Carol is striking up a romance with Antonio.
There are some cool visuals of Daryl riding a motorcycle through the desert when he breaks off on his own. On his way to Barcelona, he runs afoul of a gang of bandoleros aboard a train being towed by walkers. The gang leader sees Daryl riding in the distance and decides he wants his bike, so he sends a convoy of his own guys to chase him down. It’s a well-directed action sequence that recalls the Mad Max vibes of last week’s battle scene — the only difference between this desert and the Fury Road is the saturation of the color-grading.
It’s all very fun stuff, but it feels like a squandered opportunity to have a Daryl and Carol show where Daryl and Carol are always apart.
After a jousting match between two shotgun-wielding bikers, Daryl ends up stranded in the desert, a lawless wasteland full of hungry vultures and friendly rabbits. The villagers have had their water stolen by the train robbers, so they call on Daryl to help them; it almost plays like Daryl Dixon Beyond Thunderdomeor a post-apocalyptic Seven Samurai. It’s all very fun stuff, but it’s a squandered opportunity to have a Daryl and Carol show where they’re always apart.
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon airs new episodes on AMC every Sunday.
It’s appropriate that this episode is called “Limbo,” because it feels like the show is stuck there. It can’t figure out what it wants to do; it can’t settle into a lane. It has a lot of good ideas with no follow-through. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon has two more episodes to pull all this stuff together and deliver some kind of satisfying payoff, and I doubt it can. This season has set up four or five different story arcs that could have worked, but it hasn’t fleshed out any of them. It’s just crammed them all together, half-baked.
- Release Date
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2023 – 2026-00-00
- Showrunner
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David Zabel
- Directors
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Daniel Percival, Greg Nicotero
- Writers
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David Zabel, Angela Kang
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Norman Reedus
Daryl Dixon
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Clemence Poesy
Isabelle Carriere
- Defending the rabbit colony makes for a great Seven Samurai-type storyline
- The visuals of Daryl riding through the desert are really cool
- Last week’s cliffhanger is wrapped up in less than two minutes
- Daryl and Carol are split up once again
