The following contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2, Episode 5, “Vouloir, C’est Pouvoir,” which premiered Sunday, Oct. 27 on AMC.
The morally complicated world of The Walking Dead makes it hard for likable characters to survive. Most of the characters who prosper are the ones who least deserve it, or at least have committed terrible actions in their lives. Very few that have made it this far are actually pure, good-hearted people. But those characters turn out to be some of the most enjoyable in the franchise because they’re easy to root for, and show a shameful side of the main characters.
One example of these genuine characters as of late has been Ash, introduced in the Season 2 premiere of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. While initially he comes off as a hermit with no interest in the outside world, he opens his home to Carol Peletier as a sign of good faith. Unlike a traditionally innocent character in The Walking Dead franchise that cowers in fear and lets people walk over them, Ash is a man with a backbone. He doesn’t like to kill, but knows when it’s time to pull the trigger. And when he finally learns the truth about what happened to Carol’s daughter, Sophia, he doesn’t let her down so easily.
Ash’s Reaction to Carol’s Lie Captures His Best Qualities
In Season 2, Episode 1 of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, Carol had lied to Ash about her daughter’s fate. Her belief was that, because Ash was so consumed by the death of his son, he’d be compelled to help a mother who’d been looking for her daughter for over a decade. As Ash points out in Season 2, Episode 5, the worst part isn’t that she lied. It’s the fact that she used her dead daughter’s memory to manipulate him, and took advantage of his grief to toy with his feelings.
Ash’s response is normal, as anyone would expect. He’s rightfully angry that he dropped his entire life and memory of his son, Avi, to fly a stranger to France for a grown man who was fully capable of getting home himself. At the heart of the issue, one could argue that Carol’s lie was good for Ash. It got him out of his comfort zone and helped him process his grief in a healthier way. But it’s not Carol’s place to force Ash into exposure therapy. Even if it was, there’s always a more honest way than what Carol did.
Carol clearing the air turns into a one-sided screaming match. She allows Ash to explode at her, knowing she’s in the wrong. But as angry as he is, he’s never physically violent or too harsh towards her. He calls out her mistakes that hurt him, never attacking her with vicious comments that are uncalled-for. When things get too heated, he knows when to step back and decompress on his own. It’s rare to see a man on television so secure with himself and effectively communicating his issues while refusing to be a doormat. Ash is the gold standard of healthy masculinity.
The Treatment of Ash Shows How Daryl and Carol Can Be Monsters Too
What makes Ash more sympathetic than he’s already written is the way he’s treated by Daryl and Carol as an inconvenience that they still rely on for assistance. There’s no doubt that Carol truly cares about Ash, but the way she speaks about him in “Vouloir, C’est Pouvoir” suggests that she sees him less as an equal and more like a child she has to look after. Carol blames herself for Ash going missing because she doesn’t think he was prepared to leave his home and go out in the world. She’s like a mother who’s over-protective of her teenage son going to college, not because of the age gap in the friendship, but because she truly treats him like a little kid.
Has Carol forgotten that Ash has survived this world just as long as she has, and on his own? Carol has been tormented by this lie for five episodes, feeling so guilty that she’s worried the truth will scar him. She refers to him as “gentle,” which is so insulting to his emotional strength he’s had to build to live in this world without his son. Yes, he’s kind and considerate. But that doesn’t make him so soft that he needs to be protected from the world’s natural cruelty. He already knows how to do that himself.
To make matters worse, both Daryl and Carol expect him to be at their beck and call. Ash has to lay down the law that the pilot’s rules are the only rules, as they forget when they tag Laurent along for the ride. Never in the discussion about taking Laurent to America did they consider that Ash wouldn’t allow him, or whether the plane could even fit this many people. And the latter turns out to be a significant problem — one that Ash is too exhausted to even fight at this point. Ash seriously needs new friends at this point.
Could Ash Be Worthy of His Own Spinoff?
The Walking Dead Spinoffs
Leading Characters
Fear the Walking Dead
Morgan Jones (Seasons 4-8)
The Walking Dead: World Beyond
Iris Bennett (Seasons 1-2)
Hope Bennett (Seasons 1-2)
Tales of the Walking Dead
Various
The Walking Dead: Dead City
Maggie Rhee (Season 1-present)
Negan Smith (Season 1-present)
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon
Daryl Dixon (Season 1-present)
Carol Peletier (Season 2-present)
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live
Rick Grimes (Season 1)
Michonne Grimes (Season 1)
Ash being used as a tool isn’t necessarily bad for the plot. His dynamic with Carol has turned into the best part of Season 2, not only because it adds nuance to Carol, but it gives Ash the potential to be a leading character. While it’s unclear if Ash will make it to Daryl Dixon Season 3, his current storyline is the perfect segue into a spinoff. Picture Ash as a man still new to the outside world.
Ash’s backstory, seen in Daryl Dixon, is that he was betrayed by the first person he let into his home, and that destroyed his ability to trust people. His character arc could go one of two ways: he could either learn how to open up to people through different challenges, ultimately gaining a new sense of family. The other option is that he could go full anti-hero, bitterly hanging onto Carol’s betrayal as a reason to emotionally distance himself from everyone. The second route would be tragically sad, but also a fascinating examination into human connection and how one event can fundamentally change people.
The Walking Dead‘s Chief Content Officer Scott M. Gimple is always teasing that more Walking Dead ideas are always being churned out, so this could be a chance to give the Madison Clark storyline Fear the Walking Dead fans always deserved. Dave Erickson’s original plan for Fear the Walking Dead was that it would follow Madison through her slow descent into villainy, ultimately turning her against her children. As hard it would be to imagine Ash becoming like Negan or the Governor, seeing him evolve into that type of person because of how others demean him would be a spinoff worth watching. Let’s hope that Ash is given more to work with than Isabelle or Genet were on Daryl Dixon.
The Season 2 finale of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon premieres next Sunday at 9:00 PM ET on AMC and AMC+.
