When filming the third season of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, the creators asked: How would Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone, pioneer of Spaghetti Westerns, do a zombie story?
“We watched (1968’s) Once Upon a Time in the West,” said executive producer Scott M. Gimple. “Filming in Spain where all the Spaghetti Westerns were made, we wanted to lean into the Sergio Leone aspect of it and use the location. That was just a cool notion.”
Norman Reedus—Daryl Dixon himself—enjoyed filming TWD: DD in Spain.
“There’s a real passion with the Spanish people. They like to talk. They like to hug – ‘Come eat with us.’ It’s been really fun to work with them. It’s funny when you speak to a Spanish crew member, they want to keep going and talk. The French, a little bit less; New York, not at all if you know what I mean. It’s been fun working with them,” he said. “Also, the places where we filmed have a lot to do with our storyline… They love the show in Spain and in Europe in general. They freak out for it. People love to go to work every day; they talk about what they’re doing, they’re excited about what we’ve done. It was a lot like the earliest early seasons of the flagship show. It feels like that. I’ve been chasing that ever since, like a lightning-in-a-bottle-sorta feeling.”
Norman Reedus and Scott Gimple, along with executive producers Greg Nicotero and David Alpert, discussed The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon at the New York Comic Con in mid-October. Based on The Walking Dead—the comic book series created by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard, published by Image Comics—TWD:DD is the fifth spinoff and sixth TV series in TWD franchise. TWD’s overall plot is the remnants of the human race struggling to survive in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse.
Even though he was created exclusively for the TV series, Daryl is arguably the franchise’s most popular character. The younger brother of Merle Dixon (Michael Rooker, Guardians of the Galaxy), Daryl is an expert tracker and archer whose survival skills are second to none.
“I was always kinda creepy, I always had that look like, ‘I’m gonna steal your purse,’” said Norman Reedus.
Eventually, Daryl evolves into the right-hand man of TWD’s protagonist Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), the leader of a group of survivors from Atlanta. When Lincoln left TWD in the ninth season, Reedus got top billing and became the main protagonist until the series ended with the 11th season.
“He’s gone from this to somebody he can be proud of being,” said Reedus. “He never lies, he never wastes time, he’s not interested in the superficial. He doesn’t care if his clothes are ripped, his hair’s a mess. He was written after Merle died to be a racist, a drug-taker, a creep. The writers let me do something with him I was really proud of: I wanted to grow up like that and be embarrassed by it… Once Merle died, it gave him the opportunity to stand on his own two feet and become the man he wanted to be.”
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon debuted in 2023. The third season recently concluded. Next season, the fourth season, is also the final season. As this season faded to black, Reedus spoke about what impressions he wanted lingering in the silence.
“There’s dialogue that was introduced… ‘Look, all we do is we run and we fight, we run and we fight—there’s gotta be a better way to live,’” said Reedus. “As the characters get older the world gets more settled into this post-apocalyptic situation, there are people around us making lemonade out of lemons—making it work. That idea really goes into this season and sets up next season.”
Gimple stated the audience will get some closure when TWD:DD concludes.
“You will feel like you’ve got to the end of a journey at the end of season four for both Daryl and Carol (Melissa McBride),” he said. “You will also see France and Spain coming together in ways that are happy and scary, meaning some good things from France and some bad things from France that meld into the story. You will feel the culmination of four seasons of TWD:DD. The trick of it is a satisfying resolution to this four-season story that’s neither a dead end or a non-ending. We’re in the process of delivering that; it’s been a focus of ours for months and we’re about to shoot the last two episodes and this is a good setup to make the audience feel like, ‘Wow, this is a great, freaking journey I went on for four years! Something changed, something happened, and something got resolved yet there’s still another horizon I can imagine in the future.’”
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