Why The Walking Dead 1018 upset shippers
By Dawn Glen
Carol and Daryl’s fight causes upset
The revelation of Daryl having a romantic relationship is not the only way that “Find Me” has changed Daryl for some fans. The fight he and Carol have at the end of the episode also does that, in spades.
While it’s not wholly unusual to see Carol and Daryl snipe at each other, especially during season 10, this fight’s content is different, and it comes down to Connie. Although, as Carol says during the argument itself, it isn’t really about Connie or Leah or anyone else, the mention of Connie within the fight is a massive blow for both Daryl fans and Carol fans.
In the argument, Daryl blames Carol for Connie being missing/ her possible death. That, in itself, is something a lot of fans feel changes, Daryl, forever, and is not the Daryl they know and love.
Daryl knows Carol is torturing herself over what she did at the cave, that the guilt is eating her alive, and it’s that guilt that may be tempting her to run again. Yet, instead of assuaging her from her guilt, he takes her wound and sticks his fingers in it – as Carol did with the Whisperer they tortured. He says the one thing he knows will destroy her.
That level of cruelty is one we haven’t seen from Daryl and certainly not one we’ve seen from Daryl in recent years. It does hark back to season 2 when he blew up at Carol over Sophia being missing and accused her of being a bad mother.
It was painful enough to watch then, but for fans to see Daryl knowingly use that level of cruelly throwing her own fears back at her after knowing Carol so long, seeing everything she has gone through in that time, and knowing his heart as he does, makes the insult all the more cutting.