Why Daryl's kiss on The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon caused so much controversy

In the second episode of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol, Daryl — who has been part of The Walking Dead franchise since the very beginning — got his first onscreen kiss. He shared it with nun (former nun, officially, I guess) Isabelle in a beautifully shot scene on a sunset beach. It seemed like a perfect romantic moment, yet swathes of fans are saying that it has changed Daryl forever for them.

Casual fans may be baffled or put it down to “shipping”: maybe the complaints are coming from fans who are mad that the kiss wasn't with their chosen one, be it Carol, Connie, or themselves. And while that may be one of the causes, the single unifying reason across the board for all Daryl fans, is that this is simply not the Daryl Dixon they know.

Daryl became one of the most popular heartthrobs on TV thanks, in part, to characteristics which made him prime female-gaze fodder. He was a wild man of the woods who was strong and gruff, but he was also deeply sensitive, wise, and a wounded puppy who desperately needed love.

The audience fell for him when he alone would not give up on the search for Carol’s missing daughter Sophia in the second season of the original Walking Dead show, bringing Carol a Cherokee Rose to symbolize his hope that they would find her. He was a troubled survivor of abuse who desperately yearned for acceptance, but was afraid of intimacy. This traumatic past seemed to be a major factor in his seeming lack of interest in romantic love, and it’s an aspect of Daryl that actor Norman Reedus talked about repeatedly in interviews.

Due to his lack of obvious attraction to the female characters around him, many speculated Daryl was gay or asexual. But from Reedus’ words over the years, it seems more likely that he saw him as demisexual or demiromantic; Daryl could only feel romantic and sexual attraction if he has a deep emotional connection with the woman, formed over a long period of time. "I think he's the type of guy that when he does it, he'll be in love," the actor told ComicBook in 2018. "Like he will fall in love. He wears his heart on his sleeve. Everything he means he says, when he cares about someone, he cares about them. And I think playing it in that direction is better than having an episode or a scene in one thing. It means more to him. He's sensitive." This seemed like an interpretation that showrunner for seasons 9-11 of The Walking Dead, Angela Kang, agreed with. As she told Entertainment Weekly in 2019:

"Daryl’s such an interesting character that way because in some ways, when it comes to romantic relationships, he’s not a person that I think trusts easily, and a lot of that has to do with his backstory, which is filled with so much trauma. He was physically abused, as well as in other ways. There’s sensitivity there for him. And I think he’s also just a person who it’s hard for him to trust anybody enough to connect with them really, really deeply. It’s a long, slow process for him in a lot of ways to get into any kind of a romantic thing. Daryl's just not wired that way, and that tracks with conversations that Norman [Reedus] and I have had. He doesn't attach to people lightly enough that he can give it a chance easily, you know?"

This slow growth of affection extends beyond just the romantic; speaking with Daryl Dixon showrunner David Zabel for EW, Reedus argued that Daryl didn’t feel familial love for Laurent, Isabelle's nephew, since Laurent hadn't "earned" it yet:

"Zabel: "Can I say that you love Laurent?"

Reedus: "No."

Zabel: "You don't think he loves Laurent?"

Reedus: "No."

Zabel: "Man, come on!"

Reedus: "I don't think Daryl's so easy to love anybody. I think it's an earned thing."

Zabel: "You don't think Laurent's earned it?"

Reedus: "Not like that.""

The idea that Daryl requires a long time before he feels love does not fit with the story told in The Book of Carol. As with Laurent, Daryl has only known Isabelle for a couple of months, and while he seems fond of her, he’s spent much of his time onscreen being at odds with her.

Assuming that Daryl isn’t in love with Isabelle, why this foray into romance? Perhaps, we can assume, it was something different from love, something more curious and exploratory. Speaking with EW in a post-episode interview, Reedus seemed to support that:

"I think it was an experiment. It was, ‘What is this?’ It wasn't a ‘This is it!’ It's a ‘What is this? And what would that look like and how does that feel?’ I don't think there was an intention to get to second base. I think it was more of scarily parting these curtains to look at the idea of it."

Yet while the idea of the kiss being an experimentation works in terms of it not being “true love,” it still does not answer why this much-awaited TV event would happen now, with Isabelle. One would assume that an exploration of this much-delayed, and much-mooted, storyline — one which fans have waited 14 years to see — would only happen if it had something significant and vital to say about Daryl, something which takes him in a new direction. But Daryl has already lived this relationship out, almost beat for beat.

Daryl has lived this relationship before

In the episode  “Find Me” from the tenth season of The Walking Dead, we saw Daryl develop a romantic relationship with Leah, a woman he met in the woods while he lived there in exile after Rick’s “death.” The story was all told in flashback, and though the pair didn’t share an onscreen kiss, their relationship was clearly intimate, with a soft focus fireside scene indicating sex.

The similarities between the Leah and Isabelle stories are staggering. Daryl met both while separated from Carol and the rest of his family; both women were members of a religious cult which had become their family; both had taken on their dead sister’s son as their own; both resorted to emotional manipulation to keep Daryl close to them; both angrily forced him to choose between his old family and them.

The Isabelle storyline is quite literally a retread of the Leah story (which ended horrifically when Leah was revealed to be part of murderous group, The Reapers). But The Book of Carol adds another disturbing layer, because while Leah’s ultimatum came at the end of the relationship, Isabelle’s came before their first kiss.

When Daryl had finally secured a boat to take him back to the U.S. at the end of season 1 of Daryl Dixon, Isabelle angrily accused him of abandoning Laurent (whom she had begged Daryl to protect), claiming it made him just like his abusive, eventually absent, father. Having a childhood abuse survivor kiss a woman who has used that abuse to guilt him into staying by her side is extremely damaging optically.

Fans don’t want to see Daryl fall (to any degree) for a woman who weaponized his abuse against him that way, experiment or not. And that the ultimatum exists at all sticks in fans’ craws.

Forcing Daryl to choose between his old family and a potential new one, is one of the cruelest plays that could be made against a man whose entire persona could be defined by the word “loyal.” From his total dedication to being Rick’s right-hand man to his devotion to Judith and the rest of Rick’s family to his unfailing fealty to Carol as her closest friend, Daryl has always been a man who forms a bond and sticks with it.

Watching Daryl seem so easily swayed from these people truly takes the shine from his white knight armor, particularly after it seemed like the issue had been put to bed during the Leah arc.

When Leah gave Daryl the ultimatum to choose her or his family, Daryl left their cabin, making his choice. However, he ultimately changed his mind and returned to the cabin to find Leah gone, leaving her a note saying, “I belong with you, find me.” In “Find Me,” when Carol and Daryl return to the cabin, Carol finds the note and is shocked. Later, the pair have an argument, seeming to stem partly from these revelations. Daryl expresses anger that Carol keeps leaving him and their wider family, and says “I know where I belong,” the implication being he belonged with the family they had at Alexandria.

To then have Daryl struggle so much in France, questioning once again where he belongs, undoes that entire exchange. If Daryl can be so easily swayed to contemplate leaving his family of 12 years behind for Isabelle and Laurent, is he the loyal man we believed him to be?

In season 2 of The Walking Dead, Daryl asked Carol what she wanted from him, and she replied, “a man of honor.” There was something incredibly special about Daryl, that man of honor who cared with such depth and constancy; a man who put sexual attraction so far down his list of priorities; a man who would love once and love for life. To see him depicted as a man who is kissing a woman he’s known for a couple of months and contemplating giving up his family for her rubs away those special edges and leaves a lot of fans looking at a regular old Joe who bares only a passing resemblance to the Daryl Dixon they love.

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