My thoughts on Caryl canon--as if you lovelies actually asked, lol, go a little something like this.
We’re getting a spin-off.
I know the antis and the haters are doing whatever is in their limited, petty ass power to sink said spin-off and who knows? Maybe they will somehow succeed (highly doubtful). But they can piss and moan about it all they want and they still will not be able to change the fact that a spin-off is and has been planned.
To hear Kang and Norman and Melissa talk, it’s been in the planning stages for quite awhile.
Coincidentally (I think not), Carol’s story (Daryl’s too but I’m going to focus more on Carol here) started to become a little more defined around the time that this spin-off idea was born. It might not have been obvious at the time, maybe it still isn’t quite yet–we’ve been burned so much over the years–but Kang pumped the brakes and reversed course on a storyline that has seen Carol sentenced to continually rolling a stone up a steep hill for what has felt like all eternity. She started dismantling the relationship between Carol and EZ really before it found its feet and not only that? She cut the anchor of Henry from around Carol’s ankle.
Now at first, the deconstruction of the Kingdom family unit seemed like more of the same, essentially another misery arc for Carol, and to a certain extent it was. But the thing is?
Kang might have shoved Carol harshly to the ground and given her a kick for good measure, several in fact, but something that might be lost a bit in the shuffle of everybody crying this is nothing but rinse and repeat of the same old, same old, is the fact that Carol has clawed her way out of yet another abyss and whether she’s wanted to or not, she’s starting to feel it. All the losses she’s endured along the way, and she’s learning how to stand on her feet and rise in spite of them.
All those little boxes she’s shoved her past traumas into are popping open one by one and the ghosts are spilling out and she’s having to face them head on and that’s just as much thanks to Daryl as anything else because he’s been right there with her.
Daryl, who she sees. Daryl, who she can’t lose.
The above statements have always been true, but Kang’s added another little wrinkle to this relationship.
Daryl, who Carol dreams about a life of domestic peace with.
It’s a shift in Carol’s perception of Daryl’s role/potential role in her life that’s perhaps too subtle for some. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the first warning shot to them. The one that made them sit up and take notice.
I know which one I think it was. Do you?
Remember. The spin-off had already been conceived at this point. The groundwork to lead these two out of their status quo had already been started. That’s important. That nugget informs everything that’s unfolded onscreen since.
Leadership was thrust upon Daryl in the latter part of Season 9 and the whole of Season 10 and he rose to meet that mantle, but through all of that? Carol and her mental, emotional, and physical well-being remained a priority to him.
What’s more, Daryl Dixon ‘manned up’ and stepped outside of his comfort zone. He found his words and used them to tell Carol all the different ways that he could without shoving them both off of a precipice they weren’t completely ready for how he felt.
Seriously. How much more explicit can you get than “we have a future?” Than offering multiple times to run away together?
Those weren’t just aimless shots in the dark, although many took them to be. We all know who they are.
Again, we’re getting a spin-off. It’s in the planning stages at least. Kang might not have all the pit stops mapped out but I do think she’s got a general destination in mind. She’s just making a few stops to fuel up and get supplies first.
Let me ask ya’ll something. To any outsider, anybody that might live underneath a rock and might not have seen an actual episode of TWD, how do you think this plot might read to them? Without any physical descriptors, without knowing these two characters’ history as longtime friends and even with knowing it, what do you think they might glean from the fact that Kang has chosen to lead them back to each other? That she has chosen to emphasize the strength of their bond before pushing at its limits until it is so strained it has no choice but to either break permanently or weave itself tighter together with a new type of thread?
Once again, I am going to remind anybody reading this that there is a spin-off in the works. A spin-off featuring Carol AND Daryl.
Carol and Daryl’s relationship over the years and seasons has evolved from strangers to friends to best friends and now? Now they seem to be standing at the edge of a cliff staring into the unknown because seemingly Kang has decided to deconstruct their relationship. She’s in the process of breaking it down into its base parts right now and causing Carol in particular to really examine what it is that she wants.
She’s already given us all, Carol included, hints along the way.
She’s paralleled these two characters’ separate journeys to each others’ sides.
We’re ten years in. With a spin-off impending and a bit of a been there, done that aspect hovering over the whole Carol and Daryl friendship, does anybody other than the antis and haters really and truly believe that Kang is deconstructing Carol and Daryl’s relationship only to return it to its original state?
Does anybody really believe that there aren’t various romantic tropes being employed here? That this story is being framed in anything other than an unabashedly shippy way? Seriously. How many fucking times has the sheer LONGING between these two jumped literally out of the screen and attacked us with its intensity?
Pining has taken on a whole new meaning and yet, there are so many still (willfully) blind.
Or maybe they’re not as blind as they claim. Maybe they see the writing on the wall that so many that have actually longed for Carol and Daryl to take this step are afraid to really hope for and that’s why they are big time mad and ramping up their efforts to delegitimize romantic Carol and Daryl before it can be an undeniable reality. Maybe that’s why so many of them are having hissy tizzy fits over a spin-off that was born in spite of what they claim is their majority.
My personal opinion is too many exposed nerves are being hit and hit rather forcefully with a narrative that is becoming more overtly romantic all the time.
Kang is bright-lighting us all with Caryl canon and because of past events some of fandom is still too stunned to see it coming.
The rest sees it but some of them are still in big time denial. They think they can keep speeding ahead and force it to swerve completely off the road.
I don’t know about ya’ll but I’m going to respectfully pull over to the side of the road, do a U-turn, and follow these two to New Mexico and beyond.
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