Every one of The Walking Dead season 11’s six episodes will center around a different cast of central characters. As we saw this past week, the premiere “Home Sweet Home” centered on Maggie, her new group, and the Reapers which are menacing them. Next week’s “One More” will concentrate on Gabriel and Aaron. Two additional episodes, “Splinter” and “Here is Negan” will focus on the railyard team (Eugene, Yumiko, Ezekiel, and Princess) and Negan, respectively.
There are, nevertheless, two characters in this six-episode conduct who’ll get multiple centric installments. And as you would expect, it’s none other than Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride). This week’s “Locate Me” will center on the pair since will week five “Diverged.” The synopsis for “Locate Me” reads:
“An experience for Daryl and Carol turns sideways when they come across an old cabin. It takes Daryl back into the years after he left the group following Rick vanished because he relives some time that only the apocalypse could attest.”
From the absence of Rick Grimes and Michonne, Daryl and Carol have come to be the de facto contributors to The Walking Dead…if they had not been all this time anyway. In fact, if AMC revealed that the series would conclude following its 11th season, also, it announced a Daryl and Carol spinoff just to assuage fan’s fears that the set would one day not be on television.
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Given a spinoff is on the horizon, it’s reasonable to wonder whether Daryl and Carol starring in a full one-third of The Walking Dead season 10C is a means to begin to lay the groundwork for their eventual spinoff 24 episodes from now.
By showrunner Angela Kang, the answer to this question is a paraphrased “eh, maybe kind of…but not really.” As Kang points out, The Walking Dead season 11’s 24 confirmed episodes represent a big chunk of storytelling before Carol and Daryl strike off on their own.
“In the specific place that they’re at now, it feels pretty far from where they’d have to be to be able to go into their spinoff, but it’s a part of their continuing story,” Kang says. “We’ve got kind of a long runway to do it since we’ve got 24 episodes beforehand in season 11.”
Somewhat lost in the truth that The Walking Dead is the end is the series still has quite a ways to go. Along with those six extra seasons 10 episodes, the 24 episodes that will compose the last year represent the show’s biggest episode sequence by far. So instead of looking to Daryl and Carol’s futures on their own, “Find Me” and “Diverged” will focus on the characters’ past.
“We felt like we had to kind of pay off a few of the psychological territory we explore with them in year 10, where they were occasionally at odds, there were a few dark moments, and things were hard,” Kang says. “They are so close and sometimes you can find quite painful confrontations to be had when that is the situation. It is all part of the roller coaster of feelings these two will undergo together over time.”
It’s easy to forget since season 10 premiered all the way back in October 2019, but Daryl and Carol have occasionally been at odds lately in the show’s canon. The February 2020 midseason premiere, “Squeeze”, specifically challenged the duo’s relationship. Carol’s desire for vengeance against Alpha clouded her judgment, which led to Daryl’s love interest Connie being dying at a cave-collapse (she’s not dead, of course, but that is a conversation for another time).
