After playing a character for 15 years, how does one finally say goodbye? Norman Reedus had a great way of explaining that feeling, and I think all Walking Dead fans will agree.
In an interview with TV Insider, Reedus was asked what it was like to finally say goodbye to this character after all this time, and he had a perfect answer.
“Yeah, it was kind of bittersweet. I mean, there was a story arc that we wanted to get through, which is a revolving theme since episode one of the spinoff, but it's the idea of trying to find what home means and being comfortable in your skin with whatever that answer is going to be. So I think where we ended up was very satisfying to…answer those questions.”
Daryl has always been looking for a home in The Walking Dead
If you’ve been watching The Walking Dead since the beginning, that's really been an ongoing topic for Daryl specifically. At first, he felt like just a redneck guy with an attitude problem, but we slowly peeled back the layers to see who he was, what he went through, and how he became the person he is today in the spinoff.
Of all the Walking Dead spinoffs, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon has done the best job of diving into the characters we all know and love and turning them into much more complex figures. The Ones Who Live was a great way to see Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) reunite, but beyond that, we didn’t see much else beneath the surface with them.
As for Dead City, the one advantage has been watching Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) come together in a way we never thought possible. After years of fighting, these two are full-on allies. They are practically family now, which is hard to believe after Glenn’s (Steven Yeun) death in season 7 of The Walking Dead.
Aside from that, we never really got to see deep into their minds, even though they're the show's center. Heck, we barely know why Maggie is so intent on staying in Manhattan instead of returning to the group we all know and love.
Daryl Dixon has taken the opposite approach. Daryl and Carol (Melissa McBride) have made it their mission to get home. In doing so, they've discovered things about themselves we never saw before. We’ve seen them both find connections and lose them over three seasons. We saw them meet characters who died the next episode. We have seen them rise and fall and rise and fall again and again.
The fact that Reedus sees his ending as Daryl finally coming full circle and figuring out what “home” means a lot after all the suffering these two have had to endure.
Will their "homes" be together?
However, we still aren’t out of the woods with these characters. We know that home for these two characters could very well mean something different.
Just in the Daryl Dixon season 4 teaser, we know that Daryl somehow made it back to some version of America, where he’s talking with someone who says, "Welcome home. It's going to be the new character played by Jimmy Smits. We don’t see Carol anywhere near him. We also see that Carol is dealing with a new variant of zombie that looks absolutely terrifying.
So does this mean Daryl finds a home without her? That genuinely breaks my heart to even think about.
It honestly would make sense for their story to end the same way, since the show has really focused on the two of them for years on end, ever since season 2. If one of them somehow died, I think I would basically just combust into ash and never trust a single Walking Dead product again. Daryl and Carol until the end.
That said, it does make me sad to see this character go after years of watching. But as long as Daryl does actually find his home and it’s not, like, the beyond, I’ll be happy.
You can stream the first three seasons of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon on AMC+ and Netflix. The series returns in February 2027.
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