The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon showrunner David Zabel explains his decision to have Carol and Ash stop over in Greenland before arriving in France.

Melissa McBride as Carol Peletier – The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon _ Season 2, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Emmanuel Guimier/AMC /

In the season premiere of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol, Carol manages to convince her newfound pilot friend Ash to fly her across the Atlantic to France, lying to him that she’s trying to find her daughter Sophia (really she’s looking for her friend Daryl). But Ash’s plane is small, so in the second episode the two need to make a short layover in Greenland, where they’re met by a small group of survivors and encounter disgusting marsh-walkers. They even encounter a couple of scientists.

Turns out, it was showrunner David Zabel who brought forth the idea of setting part of the episode in Greenland. “This one started with me,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “We didn’t want to just have Carol pop into France and make things too easy. And we knew that the plane really couldn’t go direct. It was gonna have to make a stop somewhere. So we started talking about Greenland and, who would be in Greenland? If we found somebody still in Greenland, [who] would they be? What would the walkers be like? We talked a lot about the walkers, the marshy walkers, and then we talked about who would be there, and how would that make an interesting story?”

The two scientists who live secluded in Greenland first appear innocent enough, but we soon learn of their malevolent motives. They see Ash as someone they can use to procreate with and help repopulate the world, which has been devastated by a zombie apocalypse. Despite being scientists, they’re clearly not very intelligent. “We had this idea that two scientists could have survived, alone in their station,” Zabel explains. “After the apocalypse, they had managed to continue to live there. We managed to spin a good story out of that. I really love that one.”

Sadly, the Greenland storyline only takes up one episode. The writers didn’t have enough time to tell a longer story — the main focus was getting Carol to France, after all. “In a different world, we would have spent even more time in Greenland, but we only had six episodes,” Zabel admitted.

Episodes of Daryl Dixon’s Walking Dead prequel show continue Sundays on AMC. Sooner or later, Daryl and Carol have to meet up, but if the stories are this entertaining in the meanwhile, we’ll allow another detour or two.