The following contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2, Episode 4, “La Paradis Pour Toi,” which premiered Sunday, Oct. 20 on AMC.

Following up on Season 1 of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon was a big task. Not only did the series have to introduce Carol into this established French setting where Daryl had made several alliances and enemies, but it had to solve some mysteries from the first season. The biggest of which was who Carol was referring to on the radio with Daryl, when she said “[Unclear person] came back.”

Daryl Dixon played a sneaky trick by cutting the radio off when Carol mentioned the “person” who had come back to Alexandria or the Commonwealth. Of course, this opened up a Pandora’s box in The Walking Dead universe. At the time of the radio call in Season 1, Episode 5, “Deux Amours,”The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live hadn’t been released yet. People didn’t know if Rick was coming back home, but there was suspicion that he would finally achieve the happy ending he deserved. For many, that happy ending included a reunion with his best friend Daryl. But Daryl Dixon Season 2, Episode 4, “La Paradis Pour Toi” squashes any hope that a reunion between Daryl and Rick is in the near future.

Who (or What) Was Carol Talking About on the Radio?

The Source of the Radio Mystery From Season 1 Turned Out to Be a ‘Feeling’

Once Carol and Daryl finally get their bearings together, after happily finding each other in France but losing Isabelle, Daryl finally gets around to asking her the big question. At first, Carol doesn’t even know what conversation he’s referring to, as if it has no significance to her. But once she catches up, she explains what she actually meant to say on the radio:

Daryl Dixon: “You said on the radio that time someone came back. Who was it?”

Carol Peletier: “It wasn’t a person. It was a feeling. Everything at Commonwealth just got so quiet. All that old stuff came back like ghosts. So I got out of there, and I was worried about you.”

Within the context of Carol’s story on Daryl Dixon, the reveal that it was only a feeling makes sense.The Walking Dead left Carol off at the Commonwealth, a relatively normal community that resembles a pre-apocalyptic society. While she fulfilled Lance Hornsby’s position as a fairer Director of Operations, she still didn’t have that normalcy that everyone else was granted.

She lost all her children in the apocalypse, and watching others live out the dream she used to have probably haunted her. When things got too quiet, without the risk of death occupying her mind, all she could think about was the people she lost along the way. All she was trying to tell Daryl on the radio was that she was scared of losing him again, and wanted him to come home. When she didn’t get through to him, she had to go out and find him herself.

Why Carol’s Reveal Hasn’t Been a Crowd-Pleaser

The True Answer Would’ve Worked If It Wasn’t a Baited Tease in Season 1

What fails to make Carol’s reveal a strong plot twist is that it was intentionally framed to be a person. Nobody realistically says “That feeling came back” when they have a limited time to talk to someone on the radio. If Carol really did want Daryl to return home, she would’ve just said, “I need you to come home. I won’t even know what happened to you if you die out there.” Daryl still may have stubbornly resisted, but it’s a better shot than just saying a feeling has returned to haunt her.

The creatives behind Daryl Dixon may have planned for the reveal to be Rick’s survival, giving Daryl proper closure and feeling less urgency to go back home, since he didn’t need to save Rick anymore. Knowing the people he loved in America were happy and safe would be more than enough to assure Daryl that he could stay in France. But this would also deny fans of the long-awaited reunion between Daryl and Rick.

Out of all the characters people have wanted Rick to see again after The Ones Who Live, Daryl is at the top of the list. In many people’s minds, keeping him in France not only ignores the entire reason the spinoff exists in the first place, but neglects to acknowledge how crucial Rick was to Daryl’s early development in the franchise. However, Daryl is in a new era where he’s learning to open up to new people and get out of his comfort zone. Killing off Isabelle to fit Carol back into Daryl’s life was harmful enough to his growth, but adding Rick would be the push that sets him back to square one.

Rick is no longer necessary for Daryl’s story, but the series shouldn’t employ a bait-and-switch tactic as a way of gaining traction. Carol’s radio call in Season 1 was clearly set up to be a character’s return to the Commonwealth, whether it be Rick Grimes, Fear the Walking Dead‘s Dwight or Morgan Jones. Redefining it as a bad feeling that Carol had fits for her story, but is generally just an empty promise to provoke viewers’ emotions.

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon air every Sunday at 9:00 PM ET on AMC and AMC+.