Daryl Dixon

AMC

This season of Daryl Dixon is pretty wild as the series has not just reunited Daryl and Carol, but it is going full speed ahead with murdering major villains essentially every week to the point where I’m not clear who is even left to fight now. But the most important development of the evening? I think The Walking Dead may have found a cure for its zombie problem.

Normally when we think of a “cure” for zombies it’s some sort of vaccine that negates the virus or prevents bites from turning you or something like that. Maybe some sort of zombie-killing gas or whatever. There have been a lot of options. But Daryl may have discovered a somewhat unorthodox idea.

In the episode, Daryl and Carol attempt to rescue Ash who is stuck in a minivan surrounded by zombies. Then, they too become stuck. Not the best plan. So, what Daryl does is pop out of the sunroof and shoot two zombies with “fast zombie” darts, for lack of a better term.

We have been dealing with the fast zombie concept since this show was first teased. Now, we learned that this paramilitary French group was experimenting with an injection that turns normal shambling zombies into 28 Days Later psycho sprinting zombies. Bad! Or is it?

Daryl Dixon

AMC

Obviously these zombies are much more dangerous, but what this episode showed is that even though they were designed to be a weapon of war against other humans, as the recent siege demonstrated, they are an even better weapon against…normal zombies.

In no less than a minute or so, these two fast zombies Daryl has injected rip through maybe 50 zombies outside the car. They eventually break in and are killed, but when they leave the car they can see that while the normal zombies are not dead they have been torn up so none of them can stand, losing legs or being cut in half or other such mangling.

You can see the idea here.

We have seen vast, vast hordes of zombies out in the wild, giant “herds” that move through the land like tidal waves. Given that we don’t exactly have any fighter jets to carpet bomb them, what do you do? Well, maybe inject 20 zombies with fast juice, set them lose and have them carve through the entire group. Those two zombies killed 50 other ones easily, and they only stopped because they…ran out of zombies. They do not seem to either A) get attacked by the slow zombies or B) turn those slow zombies into fast zombies, so there’s no risk of that.

A herd

AMC

It is obviously not ideal to create fast zombies are those are certainly dangerous in their own right, but would you create a 20 fast zombies to kill 10,000 normal ones? Would you create 1,000 to kill a million? Probably! Sure, you have to catch or kill them later, but still, this seems worth the trade.

There are exceptions here. It’s not a cure for the actual disease so you still turn if you die. And in smaller spaces like individual houses or buildings you’re not going to get fast zombies to go door to door in any coherent way. But being able to clear out these vast swaths of zombies that can wipe away entire settlements is a huge step in the right direction.

I have no idea at all if Daryl Dixon and The Walking Dead are going to move in this direction. That may just be a one-off escape scene. But I really do think there’s something to this.