AMC’s The Walking Dead
10×18: “Find Me”
Directed by David Boyd
Written by Nicole Mirante-Matthews

* For a recap & review of 10×17, click here.
* For a recap & review of 10×19, click here.
Daryl, dog, and Carol are out on the road together. She notices a map that’s fallen out of his pocket, but doesn’t say anything about it, putting it in his backpack when they get going again. They’re like an old married couple and it’s very sweet. They argue like they’ve been together for 50 years, though in the zombie apocalypse wasteland I suppose they’ve really been together for what amounts to an eternity. They’re busy gathering any kind of supplies they can find in the woods for repairs back at Alexandria. They’re also hoping to hunt any animals they might come across out there. They do find one, but it’s an old carcass.

They don’t find much animal life in the forest, so they figure it’s worth trying to do some spear fishing.
While they stop and clean the fish, they do more married couple-like bickering. Then it starts getting dark. They have to find someplace to stay the night. Carol seems melancholy, wondering if their “luck has run out.” She feels like something’s changed since Hilltop was ruined and Alexandra’s been beaten up. She thinks death will catch up with them, but Daryl isn’t inclined to start thinking like that. Probably because Daryl has slipped into pessimism before, several times. He doesn’t want to go back there again.
Then they come to a cabin in the woods. This is where Daryl used to be, after losing Rick.
We go back to that time, when Daryl was away from his group and on his own five years prior. Dog was just a young, scrappy pup running through the woods when Daryl met him. We also see the map that Daryl’s kept all these years; it was one he had back then. Was he using the map to check for Rick out there? Definitely, and that’s why he’s kept it after all this time. We see a meeting between Carol and Daryl across the river. They talked about how things were getting harder back there with their community. Daryl had been out there already for two whole years, refusing to go back until he’d searched the ends of the Earth for Rick.

Everywhere Daryl went back then he hoped to find Rick, no matter if it was his friend’s corpse. He was seeking closure; not only for him, but for Michonne, for everybody. Of course we know he doesn’t find it. And that’s part of the agonising tragedy watching Daryl out there by himself. One day, a storm nearly destroyed the map and it almost drove Daryl nuts, not to mention the weather nearly killed him. That didn’t stop him, though. Another year passed and still he was out there searching. He eventually ran into a woman out there at the cabin named Leah (Lynn Collins), the one who owned dog. Though she didn’t initially introduce herself.
Leah tied Daryl up and kept him hostage. She interrogated him, asking why he was on her land.
She eventually trusted that he wasn’t dangerous and cut him free. The two would run into each other afterwards now and then. Usually because dog would find Daryl and then the latter would bring him back to Leah at the cabin. The months passed and the two would again run into one another occasionally. Once, Leah saved Daryl from a bunch of walkers in the woods, though he reacted poorly, pushing her away. That would change several months later when Daryl went back to the cabin, tossing a fish at the door. Leah went down to his camp and threw it back at him. She wanted to “be left the hell alone.” Or did she? Neither of them did, really. This all started a relationship between the two after some time, when they got much closer and actually got to know each other. Later, things got difficult. Daryl was being torn between all the places he was stretching himself between: his friends, Leah, and the search for Rick which he framed as looking for his brother.
One day, Carol and Daryl met when he was moving off the river up to the cabin. She was there to tell him things at the Kingdom were getting hard, that she wouldn’t be back for a while. She wanted him to “find some peace.” But Daryl was clearly still mixed up inside, especially with his new relationship making things harder. By the time he made it back to the cabin he couldn’t find Leah anywhere, only dog. He left a note for her, telling Leah to find him and that he belonged with her, nowhere else. He and dog then went off together believing they’d find Leah again. In present day, Carol asks Daryl more about it, wondering if Leah simply left, or maybe someone took her. She knows that Daryl takes on the blame and guilt for many things, like Rick. Same goes for Leah now, too. We also see the division between Carol and Daryl. He seems to resent her. Probably because they’re too alike. He gets a bit nasty with her, which is unfair. And it hurts her to hear him talk this way.

“Our luck’s run out, you and me.”