[This story contains spoilers from The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol season two, episode two.]
When The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol As producer and writer David Zabel sat down to work with the rest of the team on season two, six words immediately came to mind: “We have work to do.”
With two out of six episodes of season two now released, the titular heroes have yet to meet face to face. For anyone feeling impatient, you'll have to blame air travel in the zombie apocalypse. As Zabel and the writers started chipping away at the story's pace to take Carol (Melissa McBride) from Maine to France, it became clear that she would need at least one major detour along the way.
Enter: Greenland. In this week's second episode, Carol's journey to find Daryl (Norman Reedus) leaves the not-badass on a side mission of sorts, stopping to refuel in Greenland. Carol and new friend/pilot Ash (Manish Dayal) are immediately overrun by overgrown field zombies.
“This started with me,” Zabel says The Hollywood journalist. “We just didn't want Carol to come to France and make things too easy. And we knew that the plane couldn't really go direct. It had to stop somewhere. So we started talking about Greenland and who would be in Greenland? If we found anyone still in Greenland, would they be? What would walkers be like? We talked a lot about the walkers, the swamp walkers, and then we talked about who would be there, and how would that be an interesting story?
Zabel's answer to that last question: introduce a pair of ecologists determined to save humanity, in their own way. The scientists debut as heroes, saving Carol and Ash from their certain death in the jaws of the swamp walkers. However, this be The walking deadthese Greenlanders have an ulterior motive: they want to kidnap Ash, procreate with him and slowly repopulate humanity. Neither Carol nor Ash are particularly keen on the idea, and the two scientists end up dead: one killed by the other, the second killed by Ash.
“We had the idea that two scientists could survive, alone in their station,” says Zabel. “After the apocalypse they were able to continue living there. We managed to get a good story out of it. I really love it. In a different world we would have spent even more time in Greenland, but we only had six episodes.”
According to Zabel, the order of the episode Daryl Dixon it came with advantages and disadvantages. It allowed for a tight, propulsive narrative, but it also meant leaving some different story ideas on the table.
“It was really the hardest thing,” he says. “You end up having to put a lot of things aside when you really wanted to explore. We have no shortage of history here. All we need is real estate.”
Obviously, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol there are only four episodes left in the second season, but the third is already in production. Additionally, the show will change location, with production moving to Spain. In other words, Daryl and Carol (or at least their show) are on the move, which means another stop in Greenland could be in the cards someday… and if not in Greenland, certainly somewhere else besides France and Spain.
“We looked at other places,” Zabel says, previewing other locations The walking dead I almost visited this week instead of Greenland. “There are a couple of other options out there. You never know.”
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The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol season two releases new episodes on Sundays at 9pm ET / 6pm PT on AMC. Follow along with THRhere and keep track of the franchise's spin-offs.