This was going to be more eloquent but 4.5 hours of sleep, only 1 cup of coffee, and tumblr eating my other 30 min creation of meta has left me with a scotch taped remnant. I apologize for the word vomit but I had too many thoughts about the promos, and after lengthy-late-into-the-night discussions with like-minded people (SHOCKER, yes other positive shippers) I needed to get them out.
Thank you to the wonderful people of the OG discord server (CR) for the discussion and glee last night, and all the time. Special thanks to @zehiiro for talking me off the ledge after Tumblr was a meta-cookie monster.
Teaser trailer
The entire voiceovers time were just Daryl and Carol. “Tell me a story” is Carol’s voice, albeit a little hushed and drowned in emotion but it’s her even if the screen wasn’t. TWD is famous for their misdirects in trailers w/ voiceovers from conversations not shown on screen. (Plus there is the film tracking of Caryl in a tunnel + the script notes about her claustrophobia … that’s all I’m gonna say).
“Daryl Dixon. He’s the only family I have left” This is super interesting to me on multiple fronts because 1) the many possibilities of when this is taking place timeline wise in TWDU since we have the ending of TOWL. Is this before or after? 2) either way whenever it is in the timeline, Carol sounds lonely and disconnected from the rest of those at home while/because she’s missing Daryl which is evident in her tone and word choice. Caryl are family…R!chonne are family. IMO the word doesn’t negate anything.
Carol’s fingers slowly grazing the map of Europe/France is just 😘. A subtle way without any words needed to show her longing for Daryl after finding out where he probably was taken without needing words.
Later we see her by the beached boat and on a rolling mountainside with Ash and 2 other newbies (most likely locals as the plane can only carry 2) and from tracking it appears they land closer to the Italy/France Alps border — I suspect for larger landing space for the plane. (Who knows if the newbs will last long or if the universe jinx will get them)
ALL THE BONUS POINTS FOR GIVING US CAROL ON HIS BIKE ANS WITH HIS CROSSBOW
I do wonder if Daryl’s line “where were you going?” is directed at Carol when we might get a final lengthy, overdue discussion of things between the 2 and find out what Mel meant by Carol holding something back?
Teaser trailer
Daryl’s whole aura and energy in this reminds me of how he was in “Find Me”. Uneasy, jumpy, unable to do the normally easy things for him bc he’s been apart from Carol for so long. Couple that with the story lines from Daryl in the other promo and imo it’s clear he’s still stuck in the same place he was in s1; trying to get home but constantly stopped by circumstance and/or people and it’s causing him mental unrest.
Not to mention now he apparently had to save Fallou, Emile, and some other guy in the back of Genet’s truck. (Looks like they could have used better bomb planning from someone like Nat😄)
After leaving Mick occupied in the trunk, Carol rides triumphantly into the gas station with quick glimpses of her innocent Nancy from Montclair mask. You just know someone in that group of guys is getting a bolt in some limb, and I can’t wait.
Expanding on the whole Carol in the gas station runs super close to a head cannon I have about how Carol finds out where Daryl went/how she meets Ash/how they pair up so I’m gonna leave it for now, but it makes me super happy if that’s the direction they appear to be going.
Let me know your thoughts and if you have any headcanons/ideas on where you think they might be going.
Prediction that will probably be wrong because the finale will get Gimple’d: Caryl get together in a sudden blow-up of emotions (I.e., we get one scene because we’ve had no buildup). Judith tells Daryl that Rick’s alive. Carol tells Daryl to go bring Rick back, and she’ll look after the kids/will be waiting for them to return. That way, TPTB get to string Caryl fans on for another season or two of the spin-off while they wait for the reunion of the Atlanta 3/Caryl. The buddy cop spin-off will die a horrible death like all the other spin-offs have, but they’ll use shipping wars with new characters/the promise of Carol to try and keep viewers watching. Ugh I hate how badly they’ve butchered TWD. I think we’ll get canon, but only briefly/in an open-ended way that confirms their feelings but not their relationship status. Why? Because Daryl is the lead character. And if you remove romance speculation and shipping wars from the equation, he loses all appeal (and let’s face it he’s already a terrible character to front a show - he’s more a supporting character and always has been).
Anyone who reads my blog knows I have very strong feelings about Leah’s arc, and even though I accepted a long time ago I wouldn’t be getting my way, seeing it finally confirmed onscreen puts me in a salty mood. Now, because fandom seems to create this dichotomy between positivity and negativity, I want to make it very clear that I am well within my right to voice my frustrations without changing my overall outlook on what’s to come for Daryl and Carol. The way I see it, this episode is just another example of Angela Kang making a fast grab of the lowest hanging fruit, but I still trust her to make Caryl canon in the final block of the series because of the small albeit important beats between them thus far and of course the knowledge that 11C is the final stretch before they ride off to their highly-anticipated spinoff.
Of all the controversial characters on the show, Leah sticks out because of the giant pipe wrench she throws in our understanding of Daryl’s character. We all had to scramble to reconstruct him after “Find Me” aired, and though I maintain he still only has one woman in his heart evidenced by the physical and emotional parallels between Leah and Carol in both the past and present, there are some dents. The biggest one for me is Daryl’s capacity for intimacy. Now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the hell out of the visual subtlety. I did not need a magnifying glass on whatever Daryl and Leah got up to in the bedroom, but what I did need was some kind of acknowledgement that it would’ve been a struggle for him. That way, we honor all of the effort over the last ten seasons to distinguish him from the typical virile hero while also juxtaposing the awkwardness with the far more mature relationship between Daryl and Carol. Having glossed over it, Kang unfortunately eradicates a major quality that always made Daryl special to me, and with it the opportunity to see how he grows out of it.
Some say the damage was done once Leah was introduced and the only solution was to erase her from the narrative as quickly as possible so we could erase her from our memories. I completely disagree with that approach. Storytelling 101 dictates that if you’re going to send the audience into an uproar, then the payoff better be damn worth it. And it could’ve been. Considering she came into the story as Daryl’s love interest, considering *that’s* what got the majority of his fans riled up, Leah had the potential to be pivotal for Daryl’s love life going forward. After proving she’s hopelessly broken, she could’ve been the catalyst for Daryl finally confessing his feelings for the woman who isn’t. That opportunity was missed in 11A, and you know what? That’s forgivable. Chalk it up to it being too early to pull that trigger (no pun intended).
But see, storytelling 101 also dictates that if you’re going to expand a widely-hated character’s arc beyond its natural ending point, then that too has to be damn worth it. If the protagonists and the audience for that matter aren’t going to get anything more or different out of it, then why not just let Maggie and Daryl end her in “No Other Way?” Why not just use trained assassin Toby Carlson as a plot device for Lance to gain power over the communities, which would have felt far more organic than him conveniently tracking Leah down?
Instead of adhering to the emotional tension between Daryl and Leah, and Carol by way of her starring role in Daryl’s life, we fall victim to the contrived plot set up in 11A, where Maggie seeks revenge on the Reapers and Leah by mere association, thus establishing grounds for Leah to seek her revenge on Maggie. The mirroring between them doesn’t run any deeper than that. Yet, we have to sit through this cat and mouse game between them, repetitive of “No Other Way” to the point of Maggie shooting Leah again, until they end up back at Leah’s cabin – a place that means absolutely nothing to Maggie.
Maggie herself has become somewhat of a polarizing character, the reasons for which I’m not about to get into here. Like her or not, it’s impossible to deny her character is the centerpiece of season 11 with a far more substantial story than the show’s top two billed actors, though of course Daryl still gets a huge amount of screentime. Sadly it’s not a good story in my opinion, particularly her subplot with Negan which has basically been one long stalemate up until the scene in this episode where she admits she’s starting to trust him because he saved Hershel at the apartment complex. I feel like I have to suspend some disbelief to make that make sense emotionally, but the point is, the favoritism is there.
Let’s get one thing straight. It isn’t lost on me that Maggie’s “promotion” was probably a hard-won battle for Lauren Cohan. I don’t resent her for standing up for herself and wanting more for the character she’s put years into fleshing out. What’s inexcusable is Kang and co thinking that accommodating her (or rather trying and failing to do so) means minimizing another character, namely Carol, who has been a *consistent* part of the story since season 1, who played the most integral role in the show’s top-rated episodes like “The Grove” and “No Sanctuary,” and therefore has fully earned her spot as the leading lady.
Melissa McBride can do a lot with very little because she is just that talented, but to Carol fans, it is still disheartening that the woman who can single-handedly save everybody’s asses in five minutes has become the woman who wrangles horses, fetches wine, and basically just plays sidekick to whoever she’s with while any exciting action or crucial emotional beats all take place offscreen. For example, taking out a room full of walkers with Mercer in order to save Daryl and Rosita literally happens behind closed doors. The guilt from trapping Connie in the cave, the guilt that plagued her (and us) for nearly twenty episodes was resolved in the subtext of her quick little exchange with Connie in “For Blood” and her observation of Daryl’s and Connie’s reunion. The acknowledgement that her best friend has had to come head to head with an ex-girlfriend he blamed himself for losing is…well, non-existent despite the demands of emotional realism.
The argument could be made that Carol herself wants to stick to the sidelines after the trouble she caused during the whisperer war, and that’s fair to a certain degree. There does come a point though when it reads like TPTB are merely punishing her for poor audience reception to her arc last season, and that is absolutely not fair. Especially considering a large portion of that audience carries misogynistic and ageist viewpoints. If anything Carol should be getting *more* screentime to show how she is recovering from her lowest point, to remind us why we love her and why we should empathize with her.
Daryl has been there for Carol through all of her biggest challenges, if not during the time they occur then after the fact, and Carol always reciprocates, so why that pattern is suddenly being broken with Leah, I can’t quite put my finger on. What I can say is Daryl makes his allegiance crystal clear from beginning to end this episode with no room for second guessing. He, Aaron, and Gabriel know the Commonwealth, or at least those operating under Lance, are the enemy. They initiate a gun fight with the soldiers and then after finding Leah’s camp and her discarded bracelet, split up to track her down. Emotionally, Daryl’s rescue plays out the way it easily could have and to some level did at the end of the Reaper arc. Seeing his friend Maggie wrestling with Leah who’s about to drive a knife into her chest forces him to accept that through no fault of his own, Leah simply cannot be saved. Earlier in the episode, Maggie tells Hershel that everything she does is so they have choices and I think that applies to Daryl’s predicament with Leah. Shooting her in the head isn’t a difficult choice, perhaps not a choice at all, but it frees him to choose the future that he wants, which we know will be with Carol eventually.
“Choices” as a running theme is juxtaposed with “acts of god” symbolized by the locusts to show how each of the characters are taking control of their own lives. Daryl does so by fighting against the Commonwealth and Leah, both of which represent things that at one point or another controlled him. So it stands to reason that with this new consciousness of having power over himself, we will see him actively pursue what he really wants. Intrinsically, that means we should not be seeing anymore “hints” towards a certain other pairing. Though it was hard to tell at the time, I’m now convinced the look Daryl gives Connie in “New Haunts” is functioning alone as the “bait” before the inevitable “switch” that Daryl is finally primed to deliver. With Carol convinced that he has feelings for Connie after witnessing their reunion and that look, she’s justified in bringing it up again, but this time, Daryl will have to shut it down in the spirit of not accepting any alternative courses in his life that others try to push on him.
For the record, I do find the removal of Connie’s agency in her own relationship status somewhat problematic, but I’m glad she’s taking charge elsewhere. Helping her friends expose Pamela Milton’s corruption is a bold move that I imagine will have severe consequences, most likely leading to eventual arrests. Connie writes the article, but a lot of other characters are doing their part including Kelly, Eugene, Ezekiel, Magna, and Max who steals the files from Pamela’s office.
How much of a role Pamela actually plays in the mass disappearances is still murky, though for the most part it seems like her biggest crime is continuing to hold elitist values. While Pamela rejects a scholarship fund in favor of financially supporting Founders Day, Lance is going behind her back to seize control of the communities and when Leah fails him, ends up capturing all of the Oceanside residents. We see him constantly flipping his coin, establishing himself as the decider of fate, like a god or force of nature. The ugly graze on his face from Daryl’s bullet emphasizes the monster that now lives on the outside. He can no longer mask how dangerous he is and since the show dropped the ball with Leah and Carol, I hope Carol at least gets the honor of taking him out.
I don’t think I’m only speaking for myself when I say season 11 has been quite disappointing so far. Minimal Caryl/Carol definitely spells disaster in my book. As far as Leah goes, I tried to give the show the benefit of the doubt and though I do still find value in the implicit connections to Carol, I think I’m ready to just forget about her now. While I hoped for a bigger takeaway overall, I personally don’t feel like I’m going into the hiatus with nothing. Daryl’s and Carol’s suffering relationship has been woven into the fabric of their story. We’re shown how much they’re struggling to fix things with each other, but more importantly, we’re shown how much they miss each other and how badly they *want* to fix things. They’ve been set up to finally do that in 11C and I am very excited to see that play out.
People are asking me why I still trust Kang and the answer is simple. I can see the bigger picture. The ending in store doesn’t work unless we build up to it first. Maggie and some of the smaller characters have had time to shine this season, but it seems like a lot has been resolved for them. Eugene is in a stable relationship with Max, Ezekiel is cured of his cancer, even the Maggie and Negan tension seems to have shifted, leading me to believe Caryl will be the final block’s top priority. There’s plenty of filming evidence to back that up even if we can’t say for sure what their story will entail. I’m going to do in-depth character arc breakdowns to better articulate where I think Daryl and Carol are headed next, but for now friends, I must rest. It’s been a grueling eight weeks, and to be honest I’m relieved to get a break from all the drama. At least all the buzz and late nights will be worth it when we get to 11C. I feel it in my bones. Have faith. Or don’t. That’s your prerogative.
Okay, so taking in consideration all the following facts/spoilers/speculations...
1. Carol dreaming of domestic bliss with Daryl + "what you want" convo with inner Alpha and Eugene + the "man of honor" on season 2 finale + Daryl's pirate book and "man of armor" comics;
2. Speculation of a party on ASZ with flowers after the one year time jump (wedding?) + the return of dead/missing characters for season 11 finale;
3. Norman and Melissa driving that Commenwealth jeep on a BTS footage + Norman alone riding his bike on another BTS footage;
4. "Get out of my dreams, get into my car" song on the prop department's Playlist (along with other romantic songs like "I wanna know what love is" that could be related to all the caryl scenes filming spoilers say we will get on 11C).
...m a y b e 🤞🏾 we can be gifted to a Daryl's dream to counterpart Carol's where is made clear to us, the audience, that he's in love with her?
And what better way to do that than to marry them on the dream? Just imagine Carol wearing a pink dress and holding a Cherokee Rose bouquet my heart
We could have all the meaningful characters to Caryl attending the ceremony, including the missing/dead ones. I would love to see the full cast, but I think it's more safe to bet on Rick, Michonne, Carl, Beth, Glenn, Merle, Sophia and Henry appearing. And it wouldn't matter that Sophia is an adult now because the dream world is a perfect world where she never died so she got to grow up.
We all know TWD loves dream/hallucinations sequences so yeah I feel this is a strong possibility. Also the dream could be the final inspiration Daryl needs to go after Carol and give us ✨ canon ✨.
Wondering how about the final events can occur:
After the revolution and the disposal of the Miltons/Lance, Daryl will go back to ASZ to help finish the reconstruction while Carol stays on the Commenwealth to assist on establishing a new democratic government.
Time jump, one year later, Alexandria is vibrant again. Everyone's celebrating the beginning of a new era with a renewed alliance to the Commonwealth now ruled by Mercer and Ezekiel, elected by the people. That's the party we know will happen based on filming spoilers and BTS photos.
The Grimes kids are older and safely returned to ASZ where they can be taken care of by Rosita/Aaron/Gabriel/Lydia. Eugene and Connie's group stay living on the Commenwealth. On some point knowledge about The Militia/CRM/Rick's whereabouts will serve as reason to Maggie and Negan leave to NY (and their spin off).
Everything is fixed, everyone is finally happy. Judith will say to her Uncle Daryl is time for him to pursue his happy ending, freeing him from his duty of care.
Daryl leaves ASZ on his bike (BTS of Norman riding alone) to go to the Commonwealth so he can meet her.
And finally, FINALLY, he declares his love. And Daryl just puts everything on the open, while Carol hears him baffled. He says something like I don't have anything to offer you besides myself, my love, and if you want me, if you accept me, I'll stay forever with you, until the day I die. Carol crying/smiling says that's sound like a marriage proposal, you know? Daryl gets all emotional too because she's teasing him and maybe that means she feels the same way and he asks it can be if you want.. do you...? And Carol answers I do. And HEY that's Carol finally aswering what she wants! And just like that, just the two of them alone, on a very caryl way, they get married. 🥺🥰
They kiss and kiss and kiss and we get just a tease of sexy times because TWD is prude as fuck.
And then it's time to say goodbye to everyone and ride into the sunset with the jeep (BTS NR and MMB on the jeep). Last dialogue (wishful thinking all the way):
Hey, this means I'm a Dixon now?
I dunno. You don't have to be.
Why not? Carol Dixon? Best name ever!
Yeah?
Yeah! We are the Dixons now!
Stahp...sounds good to me.
Into the sunset they go.
Credits up.
"The Dixons come back on 2023 with "The Walking Dead: Till Death Do Us Part" ❤
So having only logged onto my unused Twitter to see what the TWD tag says for Comic-Con and saw the announcement for a rick/michonne mini series… finalizing my speculation as to what happened (as already pieced together by most people)
-AMC realized the rick movies were never gonna happen. Instead explored the idea of tv (to someone’s point, trying to be a marvel-like universe)
-because of that, they needed a lead in to rick, so decided to shelve our fever-dream of a caryl road show. They changed the concept and the location. Angela and Melissa weren’t interested, as this wasn’t what they signed up for. Still not sure which came first (AMC wanting only Daryl OR them making it unfeasible for Melissa to be part of it and then going all in on Daryl)
-Melissa officially backs out, Norman stays on and AMC aligns shooting of Ride with the new Daryl spinoff
-big picture goal IS probably to keep doing miniseries type tv specials, eventually linking everyone together for a reunion. But who knows if Melissa even wants to at this point (although she may be contractually obligated). Either way, all of the changes were unfair to her
-in the meantime, I’m putting all bets on Daryl and carol becoming canon, although we don’t get to see it for that long, obviously. At the end, daryl realizes rick might be alive, and carol encourages him to go find him and “their (caryl) story isn’t over” I.e the implication is that they’re together and they’re forever so he’s just gonna go on this weird trip real quick
-Carol’s resolution is that she feels truly accepted by her community and becomes a respected leader
