The Walking Dead: Carol and Daryl make Tumblr’s top 100 ships

The Walking Dead’s Carol and Daryl become one of Tumblr’s top couples

The two longest serving characters in The Walking Dead have finally found themselves on one of Tumblr’s year end review lists, after 10 years on the show.

Every year social media platform Tumblr analyses their sites’ usage, and creates top 100 lists for the topics their users are talking about. The lists range from social activism topics, to actors, and to the internet’s favorite topic – ships.

For the uninitiated, “ships” are romantic relationships that fans support, celebrate or – as is the case for Carol and Daryl – wish to happen.

The ship list shows the relationships – in both fiction and reality – whose fans have generated the most content in celebration of their OTP (One True Pairing), usually in the form of gifs, images, fanart, fanfiction and meta. And for the first time Carol and Daryl (Caryl) has made this year’s end review for most popular ships, landing at number 66.

This is not just big news for Caryl but for the TWD Universe in general, as – despite appearing in Tumblr’s lists for most talked about TV shows  – no TWD coupling  has ever made the ship list until now.

The 2020 top 100 is filled with a mixture of canon and non-canon ships (those which are a couple, and those which are not – yet), with the number one slot this year being taken by the Star Wars ship Reylo (Rey and Kylo Ren). Other popular ships included the fanship for former One Direction singers Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson, and  Geralt of Rivia and Jaskier from The Witcher.

Despite only hitting number 66, Caryl did rank higher in the list than current canon TV ships Deckerstar (Lucifer), Brooklyn 99’s Jake Peralta and Amy Santiago, and even the TV relationship that began the entire concept of fan-shipping – Spock and Kirk in Star Trek.

Many of the ships appearing in the list, or climbing the chart this year were ships whose show or franchise were ending, resulting in a flurry of activity as fans celebrate and mourn the end of their ship. The 100’s Bellarke and Supernatural’s Destiel were ships who saw their presence boosted by their final on screen interactions.

Thus, it’s not surprising that this is the year Caryl broke through, thanks in part to the announcement of the Walking Dead’s final season heading our way in 2021, and a resulting Carol and Daryl spin-off to follow.

This announcement inspired a lot of online reaction, with Caryl fans buzzing with content from  imagining what the spin-off might be like, and where it might take the, so-far largely platonic, relationship.

Even before this announcement, Carol and Daryl’s relationship saw more focus in season 10 than it arguably has since season 2. Before season 10 aired, show-runner Angela Kang said that Carol and Daryl were central to the storyline, and that absolutely proved to be the case.

With Carol’s grief over Henry, and her need for revenge on Alpha, much of the season focused on how this affected Carol’s relationship with others, including her closest friend Daryl.

From their picnic date in the woods, to their solo jaunt capturing a Whisperer, to the cave-in, to the inevitable fall-out and painful distance in the latter part of the season – much of season 10 explored their relationship, both the good and bad.

All of this angst generated much debate and fan-creations pondering the nature of their relationship, how and when it could be fixed, and whether it would then take Carol and Daryl to a new level of intimacy.

As the season drew to a close, the couple reaffirmed their friendship with a hug and Daryl reassuring Carol she still had him, followed swiftly by a return to their conversation about running away to New Mexico together.

No doubt this is a topic that will come up again before the show ends, with Caryl fans certainly  watching the bonus episodes for any sign of a shift in the Carol and Daryl friendship. And no doubt if there is any shift, we may see it reflected in next year’s Tumblr ship list.