As someone whose Walking Dead fandom was in waning mode by the time its emotional final episode aired, I was as surprised as anyone by just how much I enjoyed Norman Reedus’ Daryl Dixon spinoff, thanks to a completely revamped set of locations and side characters. But things will look a bit more familiar in Season 2 when Melissa McBride returns as fan-fave Carol, and the show will apparently veer into the past to reflect on one of the O.G. series’ most controversial moments: the zombie Sophia reveal.
While the cynical instinct might be to recoil in horror at the thought of returning to Season 2’s Sophia-seeking slog of a storyline during Fall TV season, the impetus behind that creative choice stemmed from McBride’s own long-standing desires for her character upon returning for the AMC spinoff. Speaking with EW ahead of The Book of Carol’s premiere, the actress talked about being a larger part of the creative process in shaping the survivor’s arc, and how it allows for extra development space that wasn’t always there in TWD. In her words:
There was always more story to tell for Carol on the original show. And we're hitting on quite a bit of that in the spinoff. . . . Carol has had a lot of time to deal with grief, particularly with Sophia. What I was most interested in tackling was the unresolved feelings of survivor's guilt.
Melissa McBride
For all that I jokingly rage against the slow-moving build to the moment when Madison Lintz's Sophia shambles out of Hershel's barn to everyone's shock and grief, the scene in and of itself is pretty effective. And I can agree with executive producer Greg Nicotero's defense that Season 2's search cemented Carol and Daryl's bond, and with Lintz's notion that losing her daughter forged Carol into a beter character.
So with those caveats in mind, I can approach this with the mindset that it could be quite powerful for both Carol and her diehard fans to see her on a slightly less hectic path that allows for more moments to shed her survival instincts for a bit and let the emotions flow. Grief is arguably the hardest emotion to figure out and live with, and while The Walking Dead showed Carol to still have Sophia in mind years later, it's not quite the same as inner catharsis.
Showrunner Craig Zobel also addressed Melissa McBride's creative requests for how her first season of Daryl Dixon would go. As he put it:
I said, ‘Melissa, what are the things in the show that you feel we should explore?’ And one of the things was she felt was there was an accumulation of trauma and unresolved grief that the character had been through. She felt that on the [original] show, sometimes there hadn't been enough time or room or space true to kind of process and get through.
Craig Zobel
Norman Reedus also echoed those thoughts, pointing to The Walking Dead's massive and ever-changing ensemble cast making it harder for the show to take the proper amount of time to spotlight Carol's deeper emotions that can't just be spouted off with a few lines of dialogue between walker attacks.
Just how much we'll actually return to Sophia's death and walker-rection is yet to be seen, but answers will start arriving when The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon - The Book of Carol debuts on AMC and AMC+ on Sunday, September 29. Just maybe don't expect all the answers, with Season 3 ordered and already in production.