As Daryl Dixon continues on his franchise reviving, zombie slaying, Gore de France, we inevitably reach a nexus where the majority of the diverging plot threads come together in order to deliver some major pay off, but if the last seven-or-so years of The Walking Dead has shown us anything, it’s that the show had lost its ability to bring everything together in a satisfying manner. Be it the rather awkward attempts to redeem Negan to a rather bland climax to the main show’s final season, the franchise had seemingly lost the ability to make those big moments count when they really needed to.
This brings us to Daryl Dixon’s fourth episode which sees a lot of matters come to a head as emotional decisions and physical showdowns all play out in a way that doles many of the vintage scenes you’d usually expect from either a midseason or normal season finale from the beleaguered show. However, while the events that play out within La Dame de Fer would admittedly make for a similarly uninspiring finale, the episode manages to counteract it by sticking it midway through the season, choosing not to end matters on a standard note and instead clearing the status quo to make whatever comes next something more unpredictable.
After experiencing a dream with highly religious connotations involving Laurent preying his way through a horde of sewer-dwelling Walkers, an unconscious Daryl awakes after taking a tumble into a submerged building. After fending off a couple of watery Walkers (floaters?), he makes his way back to Isabelle in the wake of the guerrier attack only to find that Laurent is still unaccounted for but after figuring out that the young lad’s fascination with the Eiffel Tower is a major clue, they dash out to retrieve him.
They’d better get a move on though, because club owner Quinn, who not only is an old flame of Isabelle, but is Laurent’s father to boot, has made a deal with the sinister Genet in order to take the child off the board as she believes that he could end up being a beacon of hope to the oppressed people of Paris.
After catching up with Laurent at the wrecked, groaning tower, Daryl and Isabelle find they have to not only fight off a horde of Walkers, but some of Quinn’s men too and despite their best, skull mauling efforts (Daryl’s gotten really good with that mace), the child is whisked away to the Demimonde nightclub.
Switching immediately into storm and rescue mode, Daryl ruthlessly tortures one Quinn’s surviving goons in order to find a back entrance to the club in order mount a rescue, but their task is made a bit easier as Quinn’s resident moll, Anna, has grown disgruntled with his continuing obsession with Isabelle.
However, even if the group is successful, they’ll still have to separate regardless as Daryl will continue to try and get Laurent out of Paris while Genet locks the city down while Isabelle opts to stay and try to appeal with Quinn in order to get them safe passage.
Like I stated at the top of the review, if La Dame de Fer had occured at any other point in The Walking Dead’s history, it would have undoubtedly been an overwhelmingly predictable season finale as it ticks off all the usual boxes from the “final episode” playbook.
Seriously, let’s tick them off as we go: Daryl and Isabelle have to locate a missing Laurent by remembering him mentioning a specific location that means something to him. A random horde has to be put down in order to survive. The brave, yet peaceful members of a struggling tribe launch an attack against the bad guys. Daryl has a one on one fist fight with a side villain (on a gantry no less). Daryl takes on the last stretch of the quest alone as he a Laurent split from Isabelle as she enters the lion’s dead to face an uncertain future.
I mean, come on – if all that doesn’t scream “Walking Dead Finale You Can Spot A Mile Off”, then I don’t know what does and if it trulyveas the episode to end the season, it would have been a three star experience at best. However, it isn’t the finale and as such, the episode feels less like a round up and more of a reshuffle to keep the final two episode (hopefully) far fresher than the Walkers that stumble across the landscape.
During its run, one of Daryl Dixon’s strengths is that its managed to infuse The Walking Dead’s key attributes with renewed vigour with the French twist adding a needed frisson to the world building that Dead City lacked and the show reinstating the Walkers as an ever present menace rather than just a somewhat dangerous inconvenience and that’s in full force here in a single scene that sees our leads brawl their way though the dead at the foot of a gnarled and twisted Eiffel Tower that itself resembles a zombified version of its former glory.
It’s stuff like this that shows how uninspired Dead City’s use of New York truly was and dotted throughout the episode are other, visual cues that clue you in to the character’s mindset like the famously monosyllabic Dixon visibly homesick at the sight of a replica of the Statue Of Liberty and the contry it represents. Elsewhere, the episode also uses non-verbal tactics to clue you in to what’s occuring with Dixon internally as an opening dream sequence that sees him witness Laurent be ignored by a horde while he prays hints that he’s now fully invested in his mission without a single word being uttered. It’s a welcome break from the show’s frequent “tell, don’t show” attitude to character development and while the ending may take things further into The Last Of Us territory, its choice to break up the band, as it were, opens up the potential for things to get really emotional further down the line.
It’s not perfect by any means: Adam Nagaitis’ art obsessed Quinn remains a rather uninvolving side-antagonist and the not-so-final bout of fisticuffs between him and Dixon contains a noticable lack of stakes, the arc of Sylvie’s fellow nun finding love feels a bit like filler and Dixon-hating henchman-in-waiting, Codron is going to have to hold on a little longer for revenge after having little to do after his latest run in with the eponymous biker with a heart of gold.
However, it’s the promise of what could come next that keeps things ticking over nicely as Isabelle’s decision to stay with an obsessed Quinn in order to convince him to arrange safe passage continues to make Clémence Poésy’s character one of the most intriguing in a fair few years and her close proximity to Quinn’s bitter squeeze, Anna, should prove to be interesting.
While the fourth episode of Daryl Dixon is arguably the least of its run so far, it still proves to be streets ahead of anything that Dead City managed with a strong visual thread (the underwater zombie scene is wonderfully ethereal), full bloodied Walker action and a strong sense of what’s supposed to drive the story.
Claims of a shift into The Last Of Us territory are well founded, but if it manages to keep the formally sluggish franchise on its feet, I’m all for it.
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