Summary
“El Sacrificio” finds Daryl and Carol on different paths, though both remain less-than-ideal party guests.
If I was throwing a party, the last people I’d invite would be Daryl and Carol. Not that the residents of Solaz del Mar are necessarily throwing a party, but you know what I mean. Ever since “the Americans” washed ashore in Spain in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 3, they’ve caused nothing but trouble for Solaz, despite being largely well-intentioned. And this trend only continues in Episode 3, “El Sacrificio”, which you probably don’t need me to tell you translates to “The Sacrifice”.
Guillermo isn’t happy. As far as he’s concerned, El Alcaraz had a fairly cosy arrangement with Solaz until Daryl and Carol showed up, and now he’s being openly questioned and several of his men are missing. Fede, under extreme pressure as a result, spots the connection too. Carol and Daryl saved Roberto and Justina, and in so doing, potentially started an incredibly detrimental snowball effect. The sooner they leave, the better.
If it were up to Daryl, they’d leave immediately. All he wants to do is fix the boat and get them out of there, to the extent that his character is starting to become a little artificially unfeeling, especially since we’ve seen him be so heroic for so long. The implication – reiterated when he longingly watches Justina and Roberto being all lovey-dovey – is that he’s now so wounded that he has become a little cold, but I’m not sure I buy it.
Fixing the boat requires a bit of a side quest – The Walking Dead’s favourite way of structuring a season – that introduces Daryl to an old sea captain who seems to be in a throuple with her personal guards and is willing to fix up the boat in exchange for five kilos of gunpowder, which have to be procured. Roberto will help… but only if Daryl lets him and Justina come along, which he’s uncharacteristically reticent to do. Valentina offers him more supplies to do so, like he has to be coaxed into doing the right thing. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think it works for Daryl’s established character to need this much prompting. But again, that heavy-handed idea that he’s in tremendous emotional pain keeps cropping back up. Later, when he and Roberto pass a statue of a saint where people leave objects for their loved ones, he leaves one of Laurent’s toys.
Eventually, Daryl Dixon Season 3, Episode 3 remembers it’s a zombie show, and delivers a half-hearted set-piece in which Daryl and Roberto try to nick a spare rudder from a shipwreck and find themselves besieged by walkers shambling out of the water. I’m not sure how that would work logistically, but it is what it is. The franchise has been going on so long now that it almost can’t win when it comes to zombies. If they’re not around, you forget about them, but if they cause any real problems for such hardened survivors, it tends to annoy me.
While all this is going on, Carol lounges around in Solaz and becomes increasingly embroiled in the local issues. She’s definitely having a bit of a moment with Antonio, fawning over his home cinema and classic movie collection, but I’m not sure we’re going to have the time for much romance. If nothing else, it helps to establish the kind of normality that Fede is eager to preserve in Solaz, the kind of thing that helps to justify why he endures Guillermo’s adherence to awful traditions. But that doesn’t mean much to Carol, who is finding it curiously hard to accept Alba’s fate in the lottery.
As it happens, so is Justina. And it’s this feeling of guilt and responsibility that leads us to our predictable cliffhanger ending, in which Justina offers herself up as the sacrifice in Alba’s stead. Carol and Antonio figure this might be about to go down, but arrive too late to stop it, even if it’s obvious in Carol’s eyes that she intends to do something about it, never mind that Solaz as a whole might pay the price for her interference. And given Daryl has been working so hard to secure them a route home, or at least out of Spain, her relationship with him might also end up compromised.
Either way, nothing good is in either of these two’s futures, it seems. At this point, though, that’s pretty much par for the course.
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