The Walking Dead’s ‘Daryl Dixon’ Spin-Off Rounds Out Its Cast With European Actors

We are just a few episodes away from the series finale of The Walking Dead, one that will launch three separate spin-offs, Maggie and Negan’s Dead City, Rick and Michonne’s romantic adventure and Daryl Dixon’s solo feature, simply called “Daryl Dixon.”

Dixon’s feature became focused solely on Daryl when Melissa McBride left the project, allegedly because she did not want to relocate to France. As such, without Carol, Norman Reedus needs co-stars, and the show has now cast a few European actors, including a female lead.

That lead is Clémence Poésy, recent star of The Essex Serpent, who had a great run in The Tunnel a few years ago. You may know her best from her role as Fleur DeLacour in the Harry Potter movies. She’ll play “a member of a progressive religious group, who joins forces with Daryl (Reedus) on a journey across France and finds herself confronting her dark past in Paris.”

I tweeted about this early that Poésy had replaced Carol as the female lead of the series, which caused Norman Reedus himself to say that I was spreading “false gossip.” I wasn’t saying she was recast as Carol, merely that she was taking on the role of Daryl’s female traveling companion, which no doubt is a role Carol would have filled had Melissa McBride stayed onboard the series. But perhaps the character would have existed, either way.

Another actor joining is Adam Nagaitis, a displaced UK citizen who runs a black market and “sexy underground nightclub.” I guess people need to party even during the apocalypse. The implication here is that we will probably see some more established, Commonwealth type areas that just endless miles of ruin like most of the main Walking Dead series has been. Not sure how you set up a sexy underground nightclub otherwise. Nagaitis is a good add, especially if you’ve seen him during season 1 of The Terror on AMC.

As for Daryl Dixon as a whole, the storyline, as ever, seems like it will have something to do with the revelation at the end of The Walking Dead: World Beyond, which showed that in France, there are “fast zombies,” that do not shamble, but sprint, 28 Days Later style. Meanwhile, back in the US, The Walking Dead has now introduced the concept of “smart” zombies that can climb walls, open doors and use weapons like knives. Not sure if these are meant to be two, entirely separate variants, but it seems like a way AMC is going to try to keep the concept of zombies fresh across all the spin-offs.

We do not have any idea how exactly Daryl gets transported to France. Supposedly him figuring out how he got there is part of the storyline, and I’m not sure what explanation there would be other than someone abducting him at the end of the mainline series. It remains to be seen if Melissa McBride could appear at least as a cameo, somehow, though as ever, her appearance, or lack thereof, continues to be a touchy subject.

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