Norman Reedus reveals his Daryl & Carol spin-off with co-star Melissa McBride “won’t look anything like” The Walking Dead, the flagship series ending after 11 seasons in 2022. Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang co-created the untitled spin-off with TWD Universe chief content officer Scott Gimple, who has described Daryl & Carol as having a “different tone” and “a different mission churning under it.” The greenlit sequel show, set to premiere in 2023 on AMC, will take Daryl Dixon (Reedus) and Carol Peletier (McBride) out on the road as they discover and explore a new frontier in The Walking Dead‘s zombie apocalypse.
“I can’t tell you a whole lot about the spin-off. I can tell you that it won’t look anything like The Walking Dead,” Reedus said when answering fan-tweeted questions for IMDb. “It won’t look like an episode of Walking Dead with just Daryl and Carol. It’ll be completely different.”
The stripped-down spin-off with a lighter tone “will be of a great deal about discovery,” Gimple said in a statement read aloud on TWD Universe Preview Special 2020, which aired just weeks after AMC announced the end of the mothership and the greenlit Daryl & Carol. “A new world, a new tone, a new frontier of story and purpose — all while carrying the lessons learned from the people who have made up their apocalypse family, their hard-won victories, and painful losses.”
Reedus later revealed on Talking Dead that original plans had Daryl and Carol leaving The Walking Dead together, hitting the road in their own spin-off but returning to check in with their group of zombie apocalypse survivors. Plans changed when AMC announced, to Reedus’ surprise, Season 11 of The Walking Dead would be its last.
“I’ve always loved the relationship with Daryl and Carol, and we play off of each other so well. It’s a different type of show,” Reedus said of Daryl & Carol. “It’s a show of hope. It’s not two groups fighting for territory or something like that. It’s she and I on the road, seeing who is left out in the world, and it kind of opens up a lot of possibilities.”
The Walking Dead planted seeds for a Daryl and Carol road trip in the Kang-scripted Season 10 premiere in 2019, where the longtime best friends mull over heading to New Mexico on Daryl’s motorcycle to “see who’s left.”
“We’ve definitely talked about how we think we land them and where they kind of tip-off to [in the new show],” Kang recently told the Deadline podcast about transitioning Daryl and Carol from The Walking Dead series finale into the spin-off. “We have pitched out what we think is the pilot, and it’s all in development, which is on its own schedule. Things are still in the process of being broken by beats and written and all of that, but we at least have a plan which hopefully will work out.”
There are still 24 episodes of The Walking Dead left to air before the flagship wraps up in 2022. Daryl & Carol hits the road in 2023, with Kang returning as showrunner.
Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD. The Final Season of The Walking Dead premieres August 22 on AMC.
