‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’ 2×06 review: “Au Revoir Les Enfants”

After an exciting adventure and plenty of wild zombie killing action, we’ve reached the end of “The Book of Carol” on The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. This season brought Carol overseas to find her long lost friend and inadvertently join his mission in France. We saw the fall of villains and heroes alike in the last few episodes leading to this season finale and were left with quite the cliffhanger: who will get on the plane and return to America? 

The episode begins with a softer moment between Laurent and Daryl in which they discuss Laurent needing to be the one to make it to America and start his new life (while sadly singing along to the song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”). We then see the group in the hanger coming to the conclusion that it’s Carol and Laurent going in the plane with Ash back to America, leaving Daryl behind in France. With the remainder of the enemy forces closing in on the hanger, the group reunites with Codron, Fallou and Akila who arrive just in time to hatch a plan to ensure the plane takes off safely.

They say their goodbyes and they begin to get the plane moving while the others engage the enemy forces. Daryl tries his best to keep everyone away from the plane, but a shot comes out of nowhere that saves the plane and allows it to take off, reveling Carol has stayed behind with Daryl.

They see the plane fly off, the enemy forces retreat. The group head to a hideout where Fallou says there are two people willing to help them get to England so that Daryl and Carol can find a way home. They lead the group to the Chunnel, the tunnel that travels under the channel leading to England. Fallou announces that he and Akila will not be continuing on and bid farewell before the remaining group members descend into the dark and creepy tunnel. As they go deeper into the tunnel, it’s clear there’s no survivors left. They reach a checkpoint with gas masks and soon realize the bat feces on the ground have a nasty effect when inhaled. 

Just beyond the checkpoint they reach an area of the tunnel filled with bioluminescent walkers that are glowing like fireflies. They engage the walkers and begin to feel the effects of bat feces. Betrayed by their travel guides, the three remaining group members begin to hallucinate. Codron sees his dead brother and runs off after mistakenly beating up Daryl. Carol sees her dead daughter Sophia again as well as a walker version of herself. And Daryl has a final farewell vision of Isabelle who gives him the strength to get up and move on. Daryl and Carol find each other and decide to continue on down the tunnel with one mission: get home. 

Overall, this season was a bit inconsistent as far as the quality of the story is concerned. Bringing Carol into the fold started off great, but ultimately left a lot to be desired.

The first season broke the typical The Walking Dead storytelling mold, giving it a fresh new vibe. We saw a familiar character we love thrown into an unknown environment with unknown people and watched him connect with both in the span of season. Daryl didn’t have much to do besides badass fight sequences (which were all well done). The secondary characters from the first season that we mostly got to know all became disposable this season and most didn’t even get a truly memorable death.

While the story may have fluctuated in quality, the performances definitely did not. Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride proved yet again why their characters both far outlived their expected expiration dates on the original series and grew into the backbone of the universe. The French actors were all extremely talented and memorable and provided a completely new viewing experience for fans who just spent over a decade with strictly American characters. Along with the French actors, the show utilized the French landscape to its fullest and showed off the mesmerizing vistas that you can only get in Europe. 

As far as this episode goes, the story was predictable and not as shocking as I would’ve liked for a season finale. Carol wasn’t going to leave Daryl again, they would defeat the bad guys, and Daryl and Carol would both live to fight another day, leaving France because Season 3 is in production and apparently takes place in Spain.

While it technically did wrap up the plotlines from the season, there wasn’t much else besides the psychedelic tunnel walkers which were neat. Both this season as a whole and this season finale were both perfectly fine, but nothing exceptional compared to the fantastic first season. Here’s hoping Season 3 fixes some of these mistakes next year!

Images courtesy of Stéphanie Branchu/AMC