Daryl Dixon’s Season 2 Finale Explained and Season 3 Scoop

(Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – Book of KolyadaSeason 2 finale.)

Au revoir, France! After two seasons in the City of Fire and its winding countryside, survivor Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and his best friend, Carol Pelletier (Melissa McBride) are moving on to pastures new for Season 3 in 2025—London and eventually Spain—following the events of the tense second-round finale. (Watch the Season 3 teaser in the clip above for an early look at what’s to come, including a look at Stephen Merchantrole.)

At the end of the pilot Ash (Manish Dayal) flies with a thoughtful young man Laurent (Luis Puech Schiluzzi), leaving Carol and Daryl to find their way back to America on their own. And we see how well the first leg of their journey goes as they say goodbye to friends like the reliable Fallu (Eric Ebouani), who stays behind to explore a new romantic connection, and the steadfast Codron (Romain Levy), who flees to the caves under the influence of drugs – a fate that almost befell Daryl and Carol. Will we see Codron again? Remember that you can’t always get what you want.

But before we delve into the what-ifs and predictions, we took a step back to discuss some of the key moments and incredible locations seen in the finale episode, from Carol’s tramp to that creepy hospital.

Below, director Daniel Percival tells us all the details you missed.

I love the opening moments of the finale, with Daryl handing Laurent a guitar as they sing The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” How did Norman feel singing to the camera in this close-up?

Daniel Percival: You know, there was a lot of debate about what song to sing, and Norman suggested the Stones not only for that, but also for the end (the scene, too). We were all very excited, but it took a while to clear it and we only did it the day before the shoot. So, poor Luis had to learn chords (at the last minute). I didn’t know that Norman was going to sing, but at that moment he was completely taken. It was a very beautiful scene to shoot, and a very delicate scene to shoot because it wasn’t just a goodbye. We were getting to the end of the season and that was one of the last scenes that (Reedus) was going to do with Louis. So it was a really honest, in-the-moment scene.

The show was filmed in many amazing real-life locations across France, and the hospital that Codron and Fallu explore seemed like one of the most interesting locations, with its winding corridors and peeling walls. Was this a real location or did you create this set?

It was an old hospital. I think it was a veterans hospital, it was attached to the castle during the war. That beautiful misty hole—it was literally attached to it (the building). This happened quite often (where) these large houses were converted into hospitals. But it was completely neglected, and that’s just how we like our seats at this show. (laughs) And we did it in our hospital ward for the mentally ill.

You know when people write in Los Angeles or even Paris, what they imagine these places to be like, it gets rewritten when you find that very often because we get inspired again. It’s really cute. I just got back from a big script meeting for season 3 and the process continues.

There were so many goodbyes in this episode, but one that stood out was with Anna Valery (Lukeria Ilyashenko) as she was dragged away by pedestrians saying, “God gave up on us a long time ago.” Why was this the perfect ending for her character?

There’s a great scene in the previous episode where she’s possessed by Demimonde, but she’s still burdened with guilt and responsibility for Quinn (Adam Nagaitis). “I did what I had to do,” she said. And she was affected by the news that the nuns had died. She has a whole backstory of how she took control and she had to rule and dominate very hard. You see a man in a chain and you see her talking to people in a bar, but of course it comes back to haunt her. She was betrayed. And she is burdened with a deep sense of guilt and self-loathing for what she has become. So you think she’s selling Daryl out, but she’s actually leading them into a trap she might not survive on her own, to save them, to save the boy. And so when she dies, she dies knowing that she has done one good deed. She also knows that Jacinta’s (Nassim Bencic) sister was bitten at the time, so she finds comfort in knowing they are both dead.

And eventually Carol and Daryl end up in these incredible caves with bioluminescence and all sorts of dangers, which in the story were the old Eurostar tunnels. Can we talk about filming those scenes? Where was it filmed?

Right on the Normandy coast, very close to the Eurostar entrance, the train that goes to England. It was a tunnel, if I’m correct I’m told it was built by the Nazis during WW2 to defend the coast of Normandy. There is a story, I don’t know how true it is, that when the area was being bombed, Hitler’s train was visiting the Normandy beaches and British intelligence found out about it and they went to bomb the train and they went and hid in that tunnel. So Hitler must have been in that tunnel.

We were in that tunnel for days and days and days, the fitters and the electricians had to lay kilometers of cable because it’s a huge tunnel. And it was the right size and concrete like Eurostar, so we felt that if it came apart it would look something like this.

A lot of your places have a lot of history. Do you think this place was haunted?

(The crew) swear they saw ghosts there. It was not a pleasant place to work. It was a nasty place, and we were there in the winter—it was raining outside, dark outside—so it was dark when you came to work, dark when you left, and dark inside. But it had an atmosphere that fueled the filming as well. It took 20 minutes to get to the set. It was a huge and crazy undertaking, but we did it.

And while you’re there, we get to see Carol struggle with her walker. Did Melissa have to go all out for this or was it a double whammy?

Yes, she loved it. (laughs)

It’s so cool. What does this moment symbolize for Carol’s journey?

She fights with herself. She struggles with the part of herself that cannot let go of the loss of her child. She metaphorically and physically has to fight the demon that she carries inside her, you know, that she wants death, not her child. And she doesn’t kill her walking version. She is about to stab him, but she can’t. And it’s not because she’s afraid, it’s because she knows she just has to let it go, and so it changes her.

This is a hugely important moment for the character and for Melissa to play this scene. When she was taking the shot, we literally zoomed in on her and the take disappears under her and we pulled away to show that there was nothing there at all. And she broke. She just swallowed, you know, the grief in that moment, it all sank in for her.

Is there anything about this episode that would surprise fans if they knew about it?

Well, we did build a runway and a racetrack, and we do fly airplanes. None of it is CGI, it’s all about planes, all of that. We did actual landings, actual take-offs. The only thing that wasn’t real was Ash driving in, we did that on a set that we built on location, so he could be the one doing the race between the plane and the buggy. There is no deception in this. And it took an incredibly resilient pilot to risk doing that, and very resilient stuntmen chasing it—they got right to the wing. It was all real. We rehearsed these stunts a few weeks ago. With each rehearsal, they got closer and closer, and the trick (the guy was saying), “Look, I can go another 10 feet. I can go another 10 feet.’ Until they realized it—they had practiced it so many times that it was a reflex. These things scare you as a director.

Now I know you’re on Season 3, which just started shooting. France has been an integral part of the show for the past two seasons. How do the new sets (London, Spain) affect the show visually, from a director’s point of view?

Every place we go has an atmosphere, a flavor and a color palette. And even in France, you know, there are so many different environments. The south has much warmer tones and limestone-sand. The north was wet and soggy. Therefore, we are constantly adapting our processes. I will say that for this new season, it’s a very subtle change that fits the environment we’re in and the dynamism of what we’re doing. What I strive for all the time, above all aesthetically, is for everything to be authentic and real. We are never anywhere, we are always somewhere.

One of the differences with shooting in Europe is that if you think about (the mother ship), you’re in the woods in Georgia the whole time. Maybe you’re at a gas station or camping, but there’s a lot of nowhere in America. There is a lot of wildlife. In Europe, you come across all kinds of remains that date back 4,000 years. People have lived here, built here and survived various apocalypses, wars, conflicts, fires and plagues over the centuries. So you always have a resonance or a story or a vibe somewhere, and it’s really great to be shooting on a consistent basis that gives you that all the time. Even regionally, the countries you shoot in have architectural differences, iconic landscapes, different flavors for every part of the country you’re in. How do you communicate in subtle ways with your audience all the time where you are? There are countless such moments.

The Walking Dead: The Book of Carol by Daryl DixonSeason 3 premiere, TBD, AMC