Sunday’s Season 2 premiere of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon wasted no time letting viewers know that they were now metaphorically reading The Book of Carol. From the jump, Melissa McBride’s iconic character was large and in charge as she let arrows fly in pursuit of intel on the whereabouts of her bestie. “Lady, are you crazy?!?” asked one of the unfortunate souls who made the mistake of even thinking of getting in her way. “Certifiable,” she replied.

Ah, it was good to have her back in action!

After learning that Daryl had been made a reluctant passenger on a ship bound for France, Carol chased down the pilot of a biplane that she spotted flying overhead. Understandably, Ash (Manish Dayal, late of The Resident) was suspicious. But he was no match for Carol’s little-ol’-me routine. In no time, he was letting her crash in his barn — cue the memories of Sophia’s horrific demise — and offering to find parts to help repair her car.

Carol being Carol, she couldn’t help but be curious about why Ash ran off to his greenhouse in the morning as if he was on a tight schedule. So when he went flying, she took advantage of a generator outage to break in and take a look. What she found was a grave for the pilot’s late son, Avi — and a lotta trouble. The generator outage also allowed a whole mess of walkers to invite themselves in. By the time Ash returned, he didn’t so much have a garden anymore as a greenhouse of horrors.

Despite Ash’s upset, he allowed Carol to stay the night and even invited her to join him for dinner. That was when she made her move, manipulating the grieving father by saying that her husband Ed had just taken Sophia to France when the world was turned upside-down. Ash was ticked: So Carol had lied about her car needing a fix, what she’d really wanted was a flight to Europe. (If he’d only known just how big her lie really was!)

Clearly the forgiving type, Ash ultimately agreed to let Carol use her frequent-flier miles. But before they could take off, lightning struck the generator, forcing them to beat a hastier-than-planned retreat, lest their trip be cancelled by an influx of walkers. While all of that was going on…

Daryl continued to struggle to find his place at The Nest, especially after Losang asked him to stop training Laurent. So much repeated violence, Losang feared, might cause the boy to lose the empathy that he’d need for his role as a new messiah. Speaking of which, why was the music so very ominous when Losang was arguing against moving up “the ceremony”? Was Laurent going to need to be martyred in order to spark rebirth in the world?

Shortly, Daryl proved to be invaluable when a mission to rescue Fallou and Emile from Pouvoir went awry. He leapt into action and got the job done. At one point, it even looked like he was going to take out the nefarious Genet. “I should have known” you were behind this attack, she laughed. “Angels always send their most vicious demon to do their dirty work… and here you are.” Alas, as Daryl reloaded his gun, he was distracted by an explosion for just long enough for Genet to escape.