The Walking Dead‘s Daryl and Carol spinoff turned into The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon when Melissa McBride pulled out of the project — disappointing many fans who watched the Daryl and Carol dynamic grow for over a decade. Fortunately, McBride returned to lead the series alongside Norman Reedus in Season 2, allowing for new angles to be explored in this fan-favorite relationship. The spinoff has been subtitled The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol — and it couldn’t be more appropriate.

The title fulfills its promise by replacing Daryl as the fish-out-of-water with Carol, who’s on a mission to find her best friend. Her determination to reunite with Daryl, who’s in the middle of a political/holy war in France, digs up unresolved grievances that complicate Carol’s moral compass. But according to Reedus and McBride, the spinoff has more than enough time to dissect Daryl and Carol’s inner conflicts. CBR got to sit down with the actors to tease how Daryl Dixon Season 2 picks up the journey of Carol and Daryl from The Walking Dead.

CBR: The Walking Dead developed Daryl and Carol’s relationship into a beautiful place throughout 11 seasons. But now that you’re in a show very focused on just Carol and Daryl, are you able to explore their relationship in a way that The Walking Dead couldn’t?

Melissa McBride: Absolutely. There’s more time. Obviously, there’s more room for the story that revolves around them .

Norman Reedus: When we started The Walking Dead, it was very much about Rick and his family. Daryl and Carol always watched out for each other , sort of on the sidelines. I feel like all this time with this relationship and these two characters has been earned. It’s a real relationship through the ups and the downs and the people coming through it. They both come from a place of abuse, and it caused them to stick up for each other. Carol getting to Europe and finding Daryl is part of that continued journey. We had so many cast members [on The Walking Dead] where, a lot of times, story arcs didn’t go in the full circle. With the time that Melissa mentioned, it allows us to tell a more detailed story.

McBride: You have that time to even explore these characters without one another and find out more about them and understand why they mean so much to one another.

Fans have seen so many versions of Carol over the years, which is a testament to her growth and development. She’s great when she’s toeing the line of morality. What kind of Carol are viewers going to see in Daryl Dixon Season 2? Have they seen this version of her before?

McBride: I don’t quite know this version. I would say we haven’t seen quite this version of Carol before. I’m looking forward to everyone getting to see it. She’s going to internal lengths she’s never gone to before to get what she needs and find [Daryl].

Reedus: I love that you see things that Carol has been having going on. You get to see more of those stories and the reasons why and the how’s and the what’s. It’s great.

In the first episode alone, she does deal with a lot of stuff that she didn’t get a lot of time on The Walking Dead to deal with. And she copes with it with this new character named Ash. How did you build the relationship between Carol and Ash?

McBride: He’s great! It was really sweet because they have so much in common. What Carol is doing [with Ash] surprises her, but at the same time, it weighs on her because I don’t think she wants to do this under any circumstances. Ash is an amazing character. And [in regard to] what he’s going through, what he’s done, where he’s placed himself to survive, how he has secluded himself — there’s a lot for them to discuss.

Norman, everybody’s always saying that Daryl only left the Commonwealth for Rick. That’s true to some extent, but in Daryl Dixon Season 1, there’s this sense that Daryl is looking for something deeper than just his honorary brother. He becomes very attached to the people in France, and he chooses to stay in the Season 1 finale. Would you say that Daryl is looking for some type of emotional connection and a chance to settle down, however he defines that?

Reedus: I think it’s a step further than that. It’s the possibility of that happening. Daryl’s just been running and fighting either his battles or other people’s battles his entire young adult life. As the years go on, he’s starting to look at things a little differently.

He’s starting to take the lessons that he learned from the people that have died in front of him — the Hershels, the Ricks and everybody else. It’s a “what if?” Life is about choices and “What if I went through that door instead of that door,” or “Maybe my life would be better this way or that way.” It’s just heartache after heartache over and over again. There’s the idea that maybe there’s something that’s not so hurtful behind [this next] door. I think it’s more like that.

You initially called this series a reset in the Walking Dead franchise. Now that Melissa’s back and you’re heading into the second and third seasons, how would you define this series? Would you still say that it’s a reset?

Reedus: It’s a total reset. The one thing about coming to Europe in the first season is, we didn’t want to make an American version of a show that we’ve already been making for this long in a different place. We wanted it to have a different feel, like the indie movies we used to make, that we used to love.

Sometimes, when you’re on a franchise that gets bigger and bigger and bigger, the machine gets bigger and bigger and bigger. There’s room in this series where things breathe. A character can look up at the tree and see the wind blowing and think about it. There’s time to do that. I told this story a while back, but I remember when Tovah Feldshuh was on The Walking Dead — she did this thing at the window where she’s looking out and people enter the room, and slowly turns to address them. Then the episode came out, and they’d cut it where she’s just looking directly at them.

She was like, “What happened to my dramatic turn to the right?” She was so upset, and I was like, “[It’s] bang, bang, bang.” So in [The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon], the in-between moments also tell the story. It is a reset in the storytelling and the photography. The lighting’s different and the writing’s different.

It gives more time for Carol and Daryl to tell their stories, and you get inside their heads more. It’s a reset from start to finish. I’ve just been waiting for Melissa to show up . Now that she’s here, and we got to shoot this season together, it’s all the things I wanted it to be. There’s a magic there. I think with the reunion of those two characters, we got to show what it all means to them.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol premieres Sept. 29, 2024 on AMC and AMC+.