AMC’s The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon
1×01: “L’âme Perdue”
Directed by Daniel Percival
Written by David Zabel

* For a recap & review of 1×02, click here.
We find Daryl Dixon strapped to a boat floating towards land. He’s unconscious until he tips into the water, which brings him to life. He struggles to catch his breath and walk the rest of the way onto the nearby beach. What’s happened to Daryl since the end of The Walking Dead? And where exactly is he now? He sees nothing but a house off in the distance and a child’s sand bucket, from which he drinks what’s hopefully rainwater and not salt water from the ocean. Daryl walks into the nearest community and finds only French on the signs. He goes further into a ruined city. He finds a dilapidated boat and looks inside for anything to drink. He manages to find an old bottle water. He comes upon a few other useful items on the boat, too. There’s a tape recorder that details a man searching for “a safe place somewhere” and gives Daryl the first indication of where he is currently. While Daryl listens to the tapes he finds himself a bit of food. But the tapes are a depressing timeline of how things went terribly for the man and his family, and Daryl can understand, especially since he’s out there all alone without any of the people he survived so long with amongst the zombie wasteland.

Daryl starts recording his own timeline. He tells the tape that he’s trying, that he went out looking for something and only found trouble. Then Daryl goes further on into the next community, and the one after that, and the one after that. He sees the same kind of ruined wasteland in France as he did in America, just a little more scenic. He sees graffiti in one place that reads “POUVOIR DES VIVANTS.” He eventually comes upon zombies inside a building and has to do what he’s always done so well: kill walkers. It doesn’t get any easier, though. Neither does it get easy to realise that no matter where you go in the post-zombie apocalypse world, there will always be the walking dead.
There’s only more adventuring ahead of Daryl. He rewraps his wounded forearm on the road when he notices someone wearing a hood in the distance, watching him. He keeps on moving and notices a sign pointing to Lourdes. He also sees a handwritten sign that reads “Dieu vous aime,” which Daryl speaks aloud in English: “God loves you.” The hooded woman in the distance is putting up more of the signs as she goes along.
When Daryl comes upon a building he runs into a woman and her grandfather. She’s able to speak English with Daryl. She offers to trade him some medical supplies for food; an offer Daryl rushes to take. The woman introduces herself as Maribelle. Yet Daryl doesn’t want to make any new friends right now, and the granddaughter-grandfather pair are a little offended. There’s no time for any more conversation when a couple military types show up to take the woman and the old man. Daryl intervenes, killing one of the men. The other guy tries to kill Daryl when Maribelle fights back and helps kill the man. Despite all that, the old man knocks Daryl out, then he reveals he’s not as weak as before when he and Maribelle steal Daryl’s things. Things might’ve been even worse if Daryl wasn’t saved by the woman watching him from a distance.

Later, Daryl wakes up. He’s in a bed. He’s dreaming of Judith, of promising to find Rick and bring him back to her, of Carol. That’s when some nuns come to cauterise Daryl’s wound while a bunch of other nuns are singing hymns together. Quite the place to regain consciousness. Daryl goes out like a light for another while, then wakes to meet a woman called Isabelle (Clémence Poésy). He and Isabelle talk about his wound, as well as the small community of nuns. She listened to the tape recorder and heard about Daryl’s journey. He says the journey was nothing more than a “bunch of bad decisions.” We see Daryl in the bath, as he recalls being in the water, and there’s a sense that, like a lot of folks in this post-zombie apocalypse world, he’s riddled with PTSD after everything that’s happened. His latest trip to France is yet another traumatic event in the life of Daryl Dixon, including his life before the zombies. He and Isabelle talk more. She notices the scars on his back, and he notices she has her own set on her wrist.

Isabelle shows Daryl around the abbey. She shows him the weapons room, filled with all kinds of interesting, violent things. There’s medieval-style weapons right up to more contemporary guns. The nuns are well trained, it seems. Isabelle talks about the abbey’s agricultural production, as well. She shows Daryl the garden outside, which is enough to sustain them. She goes off to tend to other business while Daryl’s brought some food and drink. He’s the only man there, except for young Laurent, who mirrors his body language. An older nun says Daryl belongs “out there with the faithless and the violent” rather than inside their abbey. Meanwhile, Laurent introduces himself to Daryl. The boy has a Rubik’s Cube and a fascination with population. Daryl tells him that “math sucks.” The kid can tell that Daryl’s homesick and sad. He says: “You deserve a happy ending, too.”
Maribelle and the old man are found on the road by Stéphane (Romain Levi), who’s asking around about the two men who were out on the roads recently and never came back. There’s not much small talk to be had. The old man has his head caved in, then Maribelle’s forced to go with Stéphane and his sidekick to tell them more about what happened with Daryl. It turns out that one of the dead military men, Michel, was important to Stéphane. There’s a poster at the scene of the fight that points Stéphane towards the abbey.
At the abbey, Laurent reads a book outside a cell, inside of which is Père Jean; a priest that everyone’s hoping will return somehow. The whole situation is creepy to Daryl, and he’s determined to get out of there. Isabelle insists that she believes Daryl is “The Messenger“—the person who will help deliver Laurent to the boy’s destiny, a place where people can raise him how he was meant to be raised. She saw how Daryl dealt with the men recently. She knows that he’s strong enough to do the job. She also talks about Laurent as “the new Messiah” that’s going to “lead the revival of humanity.” She’s sure Daryl washed ashore here because that was his destiny. This doesn’t convince Mr. Dixon, though.

Daryl’s out of the abbey. He doesn’t want anything to do with anything New Jesus plan. But when he sees Stéphane and the soldiers heading back towards the abbey, he knows that he’s already become linked to the nuns without accepting Isabelle’s plan. Back at the abbey, the nuns receive a visit from Stéphane seeking the “American at large.” They let the armed crew inside, but hide Laurent, insisting that he stay hidden in the secret room just off the weapons room. And the nuns all grab a few weapons in case shit goes sideways fast. Stéphane questions Isabelle about his brother being killed and whether she saw anything, but she says nothing, and then he takes his men to go search the abbey. He first wants to kill the zombie priest, though the nuns beg him not to do it. One of the young men puts a blade through the undead priest’s brain, which sends Laurent out of hiding, mourning the priest, and reveals the kid’s presence to the soldiers. Stéphane says they’ll be taking the boy when they leave.

Right when one man’s about to kill Isabelle he’s chopped by a returning Daryl. Then the violence erupts around the abbey. The nuns are bad as hell, so they have no problem using their weapons against the soldiers. And even if these soldiers are properly trained, they have a hard time dealing with Daryl. That is, except for Stéphane, who gets the upper hand over Daryl. Thankfully, Isabelle saves Daryl, however, this allows Stéphane a chance to escape. In the wake of everything, there are dead nuns and men scattered around the abbey. Daryl has to put down one of the zombified soldiers, but otherwise they’re all dead.
Poor Mother Superior was injured in the fight. She tells Laurent: “You are the cure for a sick world.” She starts to believe that, maybe, Daryl is the so-called Messenger after all. And then she dies. Daryl already feels responsible for this violent mess, that’s why he returned to the abbey in the first place. Yet there’s no doubt at all he feels infinitely worse after seeing the carnage. That night, the remaining living—Daryl, Isabelle, Laurent, and Sylvie (Laïka Blanc-Francard)—gather by a fire and say goodbye to the dead sisters. Daryl tells Isabelle that if they can get to the place she talked about with the port, then he’ll help them get to where they must go to deliver Laurent. Only if they can outrun whatever violence Stéphane brings nipping at their heels.

Elsewhere, we see a ship that was transporting walker test subjects. It seems this was the ship that took Daryl from America, but he started a mutiny which destroyed most of the research before escaping. Genet (Anne Charrier), a leader of Pouvoir Du Vivants, orders her people to find the American.