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[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol‘s Season 2 finale.]
Au revoir, France! After two seasons in the City of Lights and its winding countryside, survivor Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and his best bud, Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride) are moving on to different pastures for Season 3 in 2025 — London, and eventually, Spain — after the events of the sophomore round’s busy finale. (Check out the Season 3 teaser in the clip above to get an early peek at what’s to come, including a look at Stephen Merchant‘s role.)
In the ender, pilot Ash (Manish Dayal) jets away with thoughtful youngster Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi), leaving Carol and Daryl to find their own way back to America. And we see how well the first leg of their journey goes as they say goodbye to friends like the dependable Fallou (Eriq Ebouaney), who stays behind to explore a new romantic connection, and tough Codron (Romain Levi), who runs off into the caves while drugged — a fate that almost befalls Daryl and Carol, too. Will we see Codron again? Remember, you can’t always get what you want.
But before we dive into what-ifs and look-aheads, we took a step back to discuss some of the key moments and incredible locations seen throughout the finale episode, from walker Carol to that creepy hospital.
Below, director Daniel Percival fills us in on all the details you missed.
I love the opening moments we get in the finale episode — Daryl giving Laurent a guitar as they sing The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” How did Norman feel about singing on camera in that close shot?
Daniel Percival: You know, there was a lot of debate over what song to sing and Norman suggested the Stones, not just for that, but for the end [scene, too]. We all got very excited, but it took a while to clear it, and we only cleared it the day before we shot it. So, poor Louis was having to learn the chords [last minute]. I didn’t know Norman was going to sing, but he was totally swept up in the moment. It was a very beautiful scene to shoot, and a very delicate scene to shoot, because it wasn’t just a farewell. We were coming to the end of season, and this was one of the last scenes [Reedus] was ever going to shoot with Louis. So, it was a really honest, swept-up-in-the-moment scene.
Stéphanie Branchu/AMC
The show has shot in so many amazing, real locations throughout France, and the hospital that Codron and Fallou explore seemed like one of the most interesting spots with its winding hallways and peeling walls. Was that a real location or did you build that set?
It was an old hospital. I think it was a veterans hospital, during wartime, it was attached to a château. That beautiful, misty opening — it was literally attached to that [building]. This happened quite a lot, [where] these grand houses were turned into hospitals. But it was completely derelict, which is exactly how we like our locations on this show. [Laughs] And we made it into our hospital ward for mental patients.
You know, when people are writing in Los Angeles, or even in in Paris, what they imagine these locations to be, it gets rewritten again when you find it very often because we get re-inspired. It’s really lovely. I just came from a big script meeting on Season 3, and that process keeps happening.
There were so many goodbyes in this episode, but one that stood out was Anna Valery’s (Lukerya Ilyashenko), as she’s pulled back by the walkers saying, “God gave up on us a long time ago.” Why was that the perfect ending for her character?
There’s a lovely scene in the previous episode where she’s taken over the Demimonde, but she’s still burdened with a sense of guilt and responsibility over Quinn [Adam Nagaitis]. “I did what I had to do,” she said. And she’s affected by hearing that the nuns died. She has a whole backstory of how she took control, and she had to rule very harshly and dominate. You see the man in the chain, and you see the way she talks to the people at the bar, but of course it comes back to haunt her. She’s betrayed. And she’s burdened by a deep sense of guilt and self-loathing over who she’s become. So, you think she’s selling out Daryl, but actually she’s leading them into a trap that she may not survive herself, to save them, to save the boy. And so when she dies, she dies knowing she’s done one good thing. She also knows by then Sister Jacinta [Nassima Benchicou] is bitten, so she takes some solace in knowing that they’re both dead.
And then eventually Carol and Daryl make their way to these incredible caves with bioluminescence and all sorts of dangers that were, in the story, old Eurostar tunnels. Can we talk about shooting those scenes? Where was that filmed?
Right up on the Normandy coast, very close to the entrance to Eurostar, the train that goes to England. It was a tunnel, if I’m right, I was told was built by the Nazis, during the second World War for the defenses of Normandy coast. There’s a story, I don’t know how true it is, that during an area bombing mission, Hitler’s train was on a visit to the Normandy beaches and British Intelligence had found out about this and they went to bomb the train and they went and hid in that tunnel. So, Hitler was supposed to have been in that tunnel.
We were in that tunnel for days and days and days, the riggers and the electricians were having to lay kilometers of cabling because it’s a huge tunnel. And it was the right size and concrete lined in the way that Eurostar is, so we felt if it decayed, that this is kind of what it would look like.
So many of your locations have a huge amount of history. Do you think this spot was haunted?
[The crew] swear they saw ghosts in there. It was not a pleasant place to work. It was not a pleasant place to be, and we were there in the winter — pouring rain outside, dark outside — so it was dark when you turned up for work, dark when you left, and dark inside. But it had an atmosphere to it that fueled the filming as well. It took 20 minutes walking just to get to the set. It was a huge and insane undertaking, but we did it.
Emmanuel Guimier/AMC
And while you’re in there, we get to see Carol wrestle with her walker self. Did Melissa have to get all done up for that or was that a double?
Yeah, she loved it. [Laughs]
That’s so great. What does that moment symbolize for Carol’s journey?
She’s fighting with herself. She’s fighting with the part of her who can’t let go of the loss of her child. She’s metaphorically and physically having to wrestle with the demon she carries inside herself, you know, that she wishes she was dead and not her child. And she doesn’t kill the walker version of herself. She’s about to stab it, and she can’t. And it’s not because she’s afraid to, it’s because she knows that she just has to let it go, and so it’s transformative for her.
It’s a hugely important moment for the character, and for Melissa, to play that scene. As she’s doing the shot, we literally had a close-up of her, and the double disappears underneath her, and we pulled back to reveal that there’s nothing there at all. And she broke. She just gulped, you know, the grief in that moment, it all flooded up for her.
Is there anything about this episode that would surprise fans if they knew it?
Well, we really built a runway and a hippodrome, and we really fly planes. None of that is CGI, all of the plane stuff — all of it. We were doing actual landings, actual takeoffs. The only thing that wasn’t real was Ash behind the wheel pulling up, we did that part in a green-screen set we made in the location, so he could be the one pulling the joust between the plane and the buggy. There’s not a tricked frame in this. And it took an incredibly, steady-nerved pilot to risk doing that, and very steady-nerve stunt drivers chasing it — they got right up to the wing. That was all real. We were rehearsing those stunts weeks and weeks before. With every rehearsal they were getting closer and closer, and the stunt [guy would say], “Listen, I can go another 10 feet. I can go another 10 feet.” Until they’d got it — they practiced it so many times, it was a reflex. Those things terrify you as a filmmaker.
Now, I know that you’re involved in Season 3, which began shooting recently. France was such a an integral part of the show for the last two seasons. How do the new settings (London, Spain) affect the show visually, from a directing point of view?
Every place we go has an atmosphere and a flavor and a color palette. And even within France, you know, there are so many different environments. The South is much warmer tones and limestoney and sandy. The north was wet and sodden. So, we are subtly adapting our processes all the time. I will say for this new season, it’s a very subtle shift that suits the environments we’re in and suits the dynamism of what we’re doing. What I strive for all the time, more than anything aesthetically, is that everything feels authentic and real. We are never nowhere, we’re always somewhere.
One of the differences with shooting in Europe, if you think of the [mothership], you’re in the woods in Georgia all the time. Maybe you’re at a gas station or at a camp, but there’s a lot of nowhere in America. There’s a lot of wilderness. In Europe, you’re stumbling over all sorts of remains that date back 4,000 years. People have lived here and built here and survived different apocalypses and wars and conflicts and fires and plagues, for centuries. So you’re always somewhere that has a resonance or a history or an atmosphere, and it’s really lovely to be shooting on a constant that gives you that all the time. Even regionally, within the countries you’re filming, there are architectural differences, iconic landscapes, different flavors to each part of the country you’re in. How do you communicate to the audience in subtle ways all the time where you are? There’s countless moments of that.
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol, Season 3 Premiere, TBA, AMC