For a show that’s become as wildly inconsistent as it has, you’d think that Daryl Dixon would try and steer away from random bottle episodes occurring in the middle of its season and try and focus on the big picture. However, with its fifth episode, the fact that this third season just can’t seem to keep its eye on the ball has somehow worked in its favour. After riding high on last week’s fantastic, action-based episode that saw a full blown attack on the town of Solaz del Mar, you’d think that the show would strike while the iron’s hot and delve more in the growing suspicion with El Alcázar.
However, while the Solaz threads are plucked at here and there, the bulk of the episode once again finds its attention span wandering to zero in on a single serving adventure that ends up having next to no effect on the main plot. With any other show, this would be disastrous, however, as the main plot of this season seems to be a bit of a slow burning dud, a break from our regularly scheduled programme proves to be something rather special.
After heading out after Roberto after he raced off to get Justina back from El Alcázar, Daryl, Carol and Antonio manage to catch up with him to find that his rescue attempt ended pretty damn badly. However, after slaying his tormentors and saving him from becoming a bird feeder for Walkers, his saviors discover that he did indeed manage to rescue his lady love only to have her taken away again – but he did get a particularly shocking revelation from her before then. It seems that Justina never actually volunteered at all and instead was given away by Fede after she discovered that he’s been fiddling the results of La Ofrenda for years.
While Carol and Antonio take the wounded Roberto back to Solaz to heal, Daryl forges on to Barcelona to try and head off Justina’s captors on his lonesome. However in typical Walking Dead fashion, life – or death – intervenes and Dixon finds himself embarking on a side mission after stumbling across a leper colony who call themselves the Limbos. It seems that the ragged Limbo community are being victimised by a gang of bandits called the Vultures who have stolen their water supply, so after the usual amount of soul searching that Walking Dead characters have to go through by law every other season, he chooses to take time out of his busy to-do pile to do the decent thing.
Of course, waging a one-man war on a gang that has their own, Walker-powered train and a leader that feeds eyeballs to his pet lizard isn’t going to be easy – but then Dixon’s always taken a perverse pleasure taking on and taking apart difficult people. Yes, a side mission means that our hero is essentially swaddled in more plot armour than you can shake a zombie at; but when the results are this badass, who fuckin’ cares?
To be honest, when I first heard that Daryl Dixon was going to leave France behind in favourcof Spain, Limbo is exactly the sort of episode I was hoping to get. Simply put, we get a full on, unabashed, zombie apocalypse western that may actually prove to be the smartest and most on-brand use of the Daryl Dixon character since Norman Reedus first walked into his very first scene. From that very first instant, the bike riding, anti-social redneck had a very real sense of Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name about him that suggested that even though he’s a good guy, he’s not exactly what you call a good guy. Squinting and everything in his path and quick on the draw with his trusty crossbow, he felt like a genuine gunslinger had been dropped into the middle of a zombie show and thus a ghoul slaying icon was born. However, the show has never really given Daryl the option to take this notion to the logical extreme until now, which is why Limbo proves to be such a rewarding experience for the long time (and often long suffering) Walking Dead watcher.
As I alluded to before, the episode wisely closes to ditch the Solaz del Mar stuff fairly quickly by sticking Roberto, Antonio and, surprisingly, Carol on the bench to let our title guy fly unencumbered. Of course this means that some rather major twists are blurted out with virtually no fanfare whatsoever (Wait, Justina didn’t volunteer? Fede sold out his own niece? Shouldn’t this be presented as a bigger shock rather than babbled exposition?) and will no doubt scupper the storytelling of the rest of the season, but in this rare case I’d actually suggest that is a necessary sacrifice in order to give us a near perfect episode. Simply put, when you strip Limbo back, it’s all classic Western stuff. The humble community that’s been ravaged by leprosy might as well be a timid Mexican village who have been victimised by colourful bandits and our mysterious hero rides into their dusty town on a horse (read: motorbike) with a whole other mission on his mind. Ultimately – and inevitably – his steely resolve changes into something more benevolent and he rides out to violently remove the village from under the villains thumb. Classic stuff.
However, what really makes the concept sing is that director Paco Cabezas seems to realise that he’s been freed of the suffocating over arching plot of the season and takes the opportunity to just go for it by mixing classic zombie and western iconography beautifully. At first, the lepers don’t look that different from Walkers, so it’s quite a wonderful juxtaposition that they all are simple, caring folk who just want to weather their illness in peace. Similarly, the brutish Vultures look like they’ve ridden right out of Mad Max 2 as they roar around on motorcycles brandishing sawn off shotguns and humongous, homemade axes and at one point Daryl even gets to joust with one as they roar at each other while blasting shells at their opponent. Better yet, the villains operate from a fucking train that’s dragged slowly across the tracks by a horde of chained Walkers that pull it as they chase the bait of a guitar player riding just ahead and while this is a fantastic bit of genre blending, the sight of Daryl running along the roof of a moving train while silently taking out thug is just too goddamn perfect for words.
Do we learn anything new about Dixon? Well, did we ever learn anything new about the Man With No Name? This isn’t an episode of character growth – unless you count the umpteenth time Daryl has stopped being a grumpy shit and helped the weak – this is an episode that’s being allowed to realise a long term character in his purest form, that of a crafty gunslinger who us choosing to use his formidable skills for good against a pack of murdering bullies. Yes, it’s a bottle episode and yes, it achieves it’s greatness at the expense of the larger narrative – but as that narrative wasn’t really going anywhere that interesting, I say screw it; let this episode soar free of the restraints of a clunky season and give us the purest version of a character we’ve seen in over a decade.
With Limbo, we now officially have the second great episode of a season that seems genuinely confused about what to next. Whether the remaining two episodes manage to get its act together the salvage the remained of the show is anyone’s guess, but Limbo proves to be so much fun that if the remainder of the season peters out, at least we got an episode where the bad guy feeds eyeballs to his pet lizard.
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