I saw Daryl's Book of Carol (Season Concludes)

Daryl Dixon: The Book of Carol was good, damn good, in fact. The Shane aspect remained (and there was even a reversal variant to accompany it), but The Searchers component was its thrust, even with the concept already tested in the Maggie/Negan venture, Dead City. With this popular trope inserted, a resilient quest pushes The Book of Carol, in which our titular lady seeks our titular gent (ah, signs of Leia and Han when Star Wars was good).   

Between these themes, there's significant chemistry, thanks in no small part to the characters, which in turn succeed because of their performers: Norman Reedus, Melissa McBride, Louis Puech Squigliuzzi, Manash Dayal, Clemence Posey, Anne Charier, Adam Nagiatis, Lukerya Ilayshenko, Roman Levi, Joel de la Fuente, Eriq Ebouany, among many others. They team up, divide, console and fight, holding different views and motives throughout their perils, sometimes at the cost of their lives, but in a way, their combative positions are nowhere near as myopic or intolerant as what we find in our rueful, present day. 

The Book of Carol, moreover, rises to the occasion because it analyzes what results from such conflict: faith, cynicism, hope and deceit (the latter most evident when Carol lies to Ash, so he'll take her to France). Such ambivalent additives distinguish any life. Though Daryl Dixon (like any Walking Dead tributary) is fictional, it's also like any worth-while Star Trek adventure, swinging right back to earth, right into stark reality, after its allegory is completed. When one peels away its reflective layers, one sees nothing but sincerity. (Try to find that in Harry Potter or This is Us. Go on. I dare you.) 

It now appears (per handy gossip) that Daryl Dixon: Season 3 will take place in Spain, and perhaps that's where we'll receive a closer-to-the-bone confirmation as to whether Laurent is ethereal or just a pampered, run-of-the-mill kid as he resides with his new, surrogate dad. Whatever happens, it's certain to be historic, but then when all is said and done, what stretch of The Walking Dead hasn't been?  

AMC's Daryl Dixon Miniseries: A Dystopic Western in Zombie France

The Loner, Tate ... The Rebel, these are classic-western forerunners for another Walking Dead. Daryl Dixon is the disguised result, the remedy for those starved for more showdowns with the living dead.  

Norman Reedus' conscientious tough guy is now a hope-churning drifter (in search of an allegorical, lost chord) in France, the place where the disease emanated. There's no evading this fictional, scientific fact, unlike the true-blue ruse of Chinese gain-of-function not causing COVID (snicker). 

Daryl is uncertain how he got washed up on a French shore, but he's apt to connect the dots (and all the far-reaching clues the process delivers), recording his observations much like Paul Mantee's Commander Christopher "Kit" Draper in Robinson Crusoe on Mars. This ought to give the adventure an identifiable narrative, but then Mr. Dixon has always been the sort of hero through whose eyes we like to peer. 

It's a given that Daryl will encounter the good, the bad and the ugly (even if the specifics are now undefined), just as Maggie and Negan did in their Dead City nod to The Searchers, but per Walking Dead's intrinsic tradition, there's bound to be some existentialism interwoven and perhaps more questions than answers. (The series might mirror Jack Nicholson/Monty Hellman's surrealistic The Shooting, with choice chunks of Jean Rollin's The Grapes of Death; I can only trust that it will, based on those teasing trailers.) 

To buffer Reedus' reprise, he's joined by Clemence (Tenet) Poesy's Isabelle Carriere, a battle-ready nun, and Adam (The Terror) Nagatis' mercurial, nightclub owner, Quinn. They, in turn, are joined by Laika Blanc Francard's Sylvie; Romain Levi's Stephane Codron; Anne Charrier's Marion Genet; Eriq Ebouaney's Fallou Boukar; Louis Puech Scuigluzzi's Laurent; and if the rumors are true, (somehow, someway) Melissa McBride's Carol Peletier. 

The Daryl Dixon's six-part spinoff starts Sept 10. I'll be watching, and if you're a Walking Dead fan (and if not, why the hell are you here?), you'll be doing the same.