Summary
Daryl Dixon achieves a decent thematic payoff on several levels, but “Coming Home” is less a finale and more setup for an already-confirmed second season.
And just like that, another spin-off of The Walking Dead ends in a deliberately ambiguous way, teasing yet more spin-offs in this fractal, undying AMC money-spinner. “Coming Home” isn’t so much the end of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 1, but a contemplative crossroads in the personal arc of both its eponymous hero and the franchise as a whole. Episode 6 is not only reluctant to tell us what Daryl might do next, but all too eager to hint at what his closest friend might be doing at the same time, a continent away.
On a raw narrative level, Daryl Dixon has always been simplistic. Daryl is in France and would like not to be. In the meanwhile, he accepts a quest to help the messianic Laurent get from A to B, mostly as an excuse to secure passage back to the U.S. “Coming Home” allows him to accomplish his most basic objectives, revealing that the real meat of the drama is not about what he’s doing, but why he’s doing it, and how his fresh experiences and personal revelations might inform what he’s going to do next.
Beware of major spoilers below as we break down everything Daryl got up to, what his next move will probably be, and who shows up at the end.
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 1 Episode 6 Recap
There are certain things that any finale in this franchise must necessarily include, and among them is action. “Coming Home” supplies that mostly in the form of a big gladiatorial jamboree that finds Daryl and Quinn pitted against an onslaught of Genet’s undead variants.
How does Quinn die?
The point of this, beyond having Daryl look cool, is to kill off Quinn, who has mostly been a one-note villain throughout. He gets fatally wounded during the frivolities and has his moment of redemption a bit later, spending his final moments delaying Genet’s guards while Daryl escapes.
I quite like what the finale did with this demise. Quinn doesn’t “redeem” himself, necessarily; he realizes that his actions thus far have been idiotic and self-serving, and he means it, but it’s still tempered by a bit of trademark arrogance as he wants to make sure that Daryl tells Isabelle that he died saving the day.
Daryl does share this nugget later, and Isabelle suspects immediately that Quinn asked him to, but Daryl claims he didn’t just to give him a little heroic send-off. It’s a nice way to close off the arc without betraying either character.
What happens to Codron?
The real redemption, so to speak, is saved for Codron, although it’s only redemption of a kind. As it turns out, Codron is willing to commit all manner of atrocities that he can square with his own morality, but killing children isn’t one of them. So, rather than kill Laurent, Codron instead kills Genet’s goons and lets Daryl and co. go.
This is mostly setup for the second season since Codron still makes it clear that he wants to avenge his brother’s death by killing Daryl the next time he sees him, but while he was okay with kidnapping Laurent, shooting him dead isn’t on the agenda. But when this is later shared with Genet, Codron is captured and tortured for his betrayal, which in my book sets him up as something of an ally for a potential second season.
Is Laurent supernatural?
What Codron has, which Genet would very much like, is the location of The Nest, where Daryl and Isabelle are finally able to drop Laurent off.
While it has long since been proven that Laurent doesn’t actually have any supernatural powers – and the point is reiterated again in “Coming Home” when Isabelle reveals that she had Laurent draw the seemingly prophetic picture of Daryl being washed ashore as a way to manipulate him into helping them – I discussed in my recap of Episode 4 that it doesn’t really matter. The Nest believes in Laurent as a symbol of hope for the future of France; Genet believes the same, which is why she wants to kill him. His importance is not to be found in what he can actually do, but what other people believe he can do.
He’s also important to Daryl, and the relationship between the two of them is central to Daryl’s maturation as a hero. Before Daryl leaves the Nest to catch his boat, he leaves the Rubik’s cube – which he dismissed earlier in the season – on Laurent’s bed, completed. It’s a very obvious metaphor for Daryl’s personal growth, and while I generally hate that the Rubik’s cube is so often used in situations like this – they come with instructions, for goodness sake! – it at least works on a character level.
Will Daryl leave France?
This relationship with Laurent is integral to Daryl’s decision about whether to leave France or not. And while Episode 6 doesn’t confirm his choice either way, it strongly suggests, like the rest of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 1 has, that Daryl has a purpose in France.
To be fair, it wouldn’t make much logical or thematic sense for Daryl to leave for the U.S. when the last we see of him is his wistful staring back at Laurent on the shore. Yes, it’s a bit weird that Laurent managed to follow him all that way without revealing himself or anything, but I can let little things like that slide for the sake of a broader point. Daryl, having ruminated on his father’s own abandonment of him and come to understand the value of fighting to protect something, reiterated by him getting all emotional at his grandfather’s grave, will doubtlessly return to the Nest with Laurent and help the Union fight Genet.
And that is very much the conflict that is being set up for Season 2 since Genet remains alive and well and if anything, even more emboldened. Meanwhile, Daryl is training up the residents of the Nest to defend themselves in the inevitable upcoming war. The battle is won, but the overall conflict is far from over.
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 1 Ending Explained
The season finale doesn’t end in France, but instead in Freeport, Maine, with Carol on the hunt for Daryl after their brief radio conversation in Episode 5.
Carol hasn’t seen Daryl since he revealed he was on the Maine coastline, so she’s looking for answers – by force, if necessary – about what happened to him. She’s pretty close to learning that he was kidnapped and transported to France, so presumably she’ll be hot on his tail, walking right into Season 2’s core conflict. It might not be the buddy spin-off everyone was promised and which Melissa McBride reportedly walked away from, but it’s the next best thing.
READ: Will there be a Season 2 of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon?
