Summary
Daryl Dixon Season 2 finally heats up in “L’Invisible”, which is content to allow both Daryl and Carol to fill the runtime doing cool Daryl and Carol things.
I’ve been pretty mixed on The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2, but let me be the first to tell you that I liked Episode 3, “L’Invisible”, a lot. It kind of abandons all pretense and devotes almost all of its runtime to Daryl and Carol doing cool Carol and Daryl stuff, which is really all anyone watching this really wants.
It even has the decency to build to a proper cliffhanger. And while I don’t think for a moment that the show would kill Carol off – the series is already confirmed for Season 3, after all – it’s fun to pretend, even for a while, that it might.
Genet’s Backstory
The weakest stuff is all frontloaded. While it’s nice to get some backstory on Genet, what’s provided here isn’t especially illuminating, and it unfortunately picks up at the very beginning of the apocalypse. Zombie media has been so ubiquitous for so long that I honestly can’t tell you how mind-numbingly boring I find the frantic start of an outbreak.
Luckily we don’t spend much time on this, so here’s the cliff’s notes version. Before she was a psychotic military leader, Genet had the aggressively normal job of working as a janitor in the Louvre, where the staff were all predictably mistreated by higher-ups who considered them significantly less valuable than the art on the walls. Her husband got his throat ripped out. Genet, trapped inside with the rest of the staff for at least a week and forced to ogle the numerous paintings depicting some kind of religious calamity or another, clearly turned into a psycho with a very specific bee in her bonnet about religiosity.
This explains, to some extent, why she’s so appalled by the idea of Laurent and the Nest. Piety – she describes them all as fanatics at one point, which I suppose given Losang’s behavior isn’t wrong – disgusts her. Her experiments are intended to prove a point that people are free from whatever divine plan they believe is laid out for them.
Carol Finds Out Where Daryl Is In Record Time
Carol spends a good chunk of Daryl Dixon Season 2, Episode 3 in Maison Mere, trying to figure out where Daryl is without drawing too much attention to herself. Continuing her chameleonic streak, she pretends to be an American tourist who was stranded in France by the outbreak, but she’s so savvy it only takes her one afternoon to figure out where Daryl is and mount an escape on horseback.
This doesn’t go to plan, needless to say, but it’s fun getting there. I really liked that Carol has Genet figured out immediately; her cheeky observation of the Mona Lisa looking sad tells the audience that she knows Genet is putting on a front. Carol is many things, but stupid isn’t one of them.
This is also reiterated by how quickly Carol befriends Remy, observes the experiments, ingratiates herself with the kitchen staff, finds Codron, and appeals to his better nature. She tells Codron that Daryl is her brother, her only surviving family, and he confesses that he’s hiding out in a fortress on the Normandy coast. Remy identifies the place and tells her it’s a few hours’ drive away, but won’t accompany her and leave Julian behind.
Carol, being Carol, has no issue with this, and sets out alone, knocking out a guard and nicking a horse before realizing that she has been betrayed. Remy sold her out to be reunited with Julian. “I’m sure you would have done the same for your Daryl,” he says by way of apology, and I think he’s right.
Genet and Carol admire the Mona Lisa | Image via AMC
Daryl Frees Laurent
Speaking of Daryl, he, Isabelle, and Fallou finally get back to the Nest in “L’Invisible”, just in time to interrupt Losang’s nutcase ceremony to prove that Laurent is the chosen one by feeding him to a walker and hoping he doesn’t turn. The chosen zombie is, unfortunately, Sylvie, who was forced from a battlement to her death after trying to expose what Losang was up to.
Luckily, Daryl and the others are armed and dangerous, and it’s brilliant fun to watch Daryl cleave his way through like 90% of the Nest during his rescue mission. Laurent is saved and manages to escape with Fallou, but Daryl is captured, and, later, so is Isabelle. They’re both imprisoned and tortured, snatching a cute moment together to confess their love for each other, which means that one of them – almost certainly Isabelle – is going to die before the season’s end.
Before that, it seems like Daryl’s only way out of this predicament is going to be Carol, who is right on the doorstep after only three episodes.
The Carol Cliffhanger
After Carol is caught by Genet she freestyles another fiction, this time claiming that she has come to France to kill Daryl, since she has intuited that Genet is likely to help her pursue that end. Her story about hitching a ride on a plane under false pretenses (as seen in Episode 1) and almost being killed by crazy environmentalists (as seen in Episode 2) is ridiculous enough to make Genet laugh out loud, but it’s so outlandish that it might be true, and that’s enough for Genet, who agrees to take a convoy out to the Nest the next morning.
Genet’s plan is what stumps Carol, though. It’s easy to imagine she intended to sneak inside under the guise of the attack, find Daryl, and then help him escape, turning on Genet in the meantime. But she didn’t anticipate that Genet plans to storm the Nest by turning her numerous voluntary test subjects into angry walkers. And she definitely didn’t anticipate that Genet would force Carol to join them.
This is where Daryl Dixon Season 2, Episode 3 leaves things, with Daryl a prisoner, and Carol about to be turned into a super-zombie. We’ve all been anticipating their inevitable reunion, but I doubt this is what any of us expected.
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