The Walking Dead: Carl’s death will galvanize Rick and Daryl
If there is an upside to losing Carl, it’s that his death is only going to bring Rick and Daryl closer than ever before on The Walking Dead.
Rick and Daryl are as tight as brothers on The Walking Dead. Though Daryl lost his real brother, Merle, and Rick lost his best friend and brother-in-arms Shane, both men have found each other and are closer to each other than biological brothers. They have lived through some tough times and they have fought each other when tensions were at a boiling point, but now that Carl has died, his death is going to bring these two men together like something we haven’t seen before.
Daryl didn’t need to say much to Carl when he said his goodbyes. Daryl is a man of few words and in that tragic moment Carl was more concerned with seeing Daryl carry his sister off to safety. In those brief moments Daryl could see that Rick was destroyed. There was nothing he could do to help Rick other than promise that he would protect Judith, Lil Ass Kicker, while Rick stayed behind with Carl and Michonne.
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Moving forward, however, Daryl knows that Rick will never be the same. As Daryl said to Dwight, when this group fights together they will be the Saviors’ worst nightmare and when Rick and Daryl are working in tandem, as we have seen before, they’re a dynamic tour de force.
Daryl spent season 7 and most of season 8 weighed down by the guilt from Glenn’s death and his ordeal at the Sanctuary. He disagreed with Rick on numerous occasions after the war started, choosing to go his own way at one point and launch a truck into the Sanctuary. Instead of making things worse, in many ways the truck allowed Walkers to make it out of the courtyard, which only served to help the Saviors make their escape.
With Carl gone, though, Daryl knows that Rick will need him now more than ever. Carl’s death will galvanize the bond between Rick and Daryl in ways that no other event in the apocalypse ever could. These two men have fought together, bled together and lost together.
Moving forward, heaven help anyone who gets in their way.
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9pm on AMC.