The love life of Daryl Dixon is a maddening series of might-have-beens, whether you’re watching from the sidelines or championing your OTP of choice. His journey is still unfolding on The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol, but it’s difficult to imagine him getting attached to anyone after so many dead ends.
Norman Reedus is one of the only actors to appear in all 11 seasons of the flagship AMC series. Daryl is a massively popular character. Even a casual TWD fan recognizes “if Daryl dies, we riot” as a battle cry. This franchise has a sex symbol for everyone, and he’s the dirtbag, maverick, antihero with a heart of gold. But the character himself, for lack of a kinder term, does not fuck. Daryl has had one romantic relationship in the franchise thus far, and it happened off-screen. This is not a judgment! It is an observation and personal fascination of mine.
Daryl is what Holly Golightly would consider a wild thing. He belongs to nobody, and nobody belongs to him. And like the Breakfast at Tiffany’s heroine and her “no-name slob” cat called Cat, the truest partner that Daryl has is his dog named Dog.
Why the hesitation to partner him up, one wonders? It’s not like The Walking Dead is anti-romance. There have even been love triangles. It’s as if Daryl is a celebrity whose manager wants him to stay single for his image, so that everyone in the audience thinks they have a chance.
That has not stopped fans from shipping him with certain characters, sometimes based on moments in the series and sometimes based on a vibe or feeling. People love to try to pin down a loner. These potential partners are all different, which to me says more about the fan than Daryl. He’s quiet and introspective, which makes him a good blank slate to imagine Daryl with anyone at any given moment, like:
Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride)
Carol and Daryl have talked about running away together. They exchanged friendship bracelets well ahead of the Swiftie trend. Carol calls Daryl her pookie. (“She’s not gonna go pure sweetness,” said Scott Gimple, who first wrote the sarcastic term of affection into a season 4 script, of the choice of nickname in an AMC featurette.) But Carol asked Daryl point blank if he wanted to “fool around” back in season 3 (“Seed”), and laughed when he shook his head. They’ve been best friends, nothing more, ever since. This is exactly the kind of platonic soulmate relationship that audiences and critics alike claim television is lacking, most recently with The Bear.
While Carol has had multiple romantic and sexual partners on The Walking Dead, Daryl has not. So, for the hoards who ship this pairing, the proverbial door is still open. Sure, there is always the possibility that The Book of Carol — or whatever they’ll end up calling Daryl Dixon season 3 and 4 — contains the longed-for friends-to-lovers storyline. Just remember that Carol is not afraid to be direct, and Daryl has a pattern of keeping people he cares about at arm’s length.
Beth Greene (Emily Kinney)
Ultimately, it’s for the best that this relationship stayed platonic. Beth was a teenager when she and Daryl bonded in season 4’s “Still,” the episode that launched this ship. The world does not need any more age gap discourse than it already has. But if it were any other two characters, the stand-alone episode in which the two get separated from the group, play “Never Have I Ever” with moonshine, reveal personal truths, and blow off steam by committing some old-fashioned arson would have been a key plot point in a romantic arc. The two characters got separated shortly after this episode, and Beth died minutes after they were reunited. At the time, Reedus mused in an interview with CinemaBlend that Daryl didn’t understand and was “sort of uncomfortable” with his feelings for Beth. That points to some kind of romance aversion on his part, at least in the first third of the franchise. But, again: teenager. We can let this be.
Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln)
To my mild surprise, this is the number one romantic pairing for Daryl on the fanfiction site Archive of Our Own. (In fairness, it’s significantly less popular on fanfiction.net, which is sometimes more reflective of older fandoms like The Walking Dead.) Daryl replaced Shane as Rick’s right-hand bro in the early seasons. Given the rock-solid monogamous marriage between Rick and Michonne, it should come as no surprise that this did not become “canon,” so to speak.
But I do understand the appeal of exploring Daryl’s queerness. The dearth of significant romantic storylines with female characters, plus one vague and mildly problematic quote about co-creator Frank Darabont once wanting Daryl to be “prison gay,” entertained that possibility for years. In addition to Rick, fans have paired Daryl with Jesus, Glenn, Negan, and even Shane. I once foolishly had my eye on his camaraderie with Aaron; Ross Marquand’s character saw Daryl’s value in a way other characters didn’t. He’s the only person who has gotten Daryl to dress up — for a party in season 5 (“Forget”) that they ended up skipping together. That didn’t grow into anything either, and it’s not even a popular pairing, but I’m still a believer.
Connie (Lauren Ridloff)
It wasn’t long after Connie insisted on accompanying Daryl’s search and rescue mission in season 9 (“Guardians”) that fans noticed and started commenting on the spark between them. Daryl learned sign language in order to better communicate with her. He’s not a particularly verbal character to begin with, so they made a good team. He smiled when he saw her, which is rare. Dog approved of Connie. Even Carol thought it was kind of ridiculous that they weren’t together. She probed him about his feelings for her in season 10 (“Bonds”) only to be met with a “It’s not like that” from Daryl. Puh-lease.
Their flirty momentum got interrupted when Ridloff temporarily left the show to flirt with another dirtbag, Barry Keoghan, in Marvel’s Eternals. When Connie returned in season 11, Daryl dropped a whole bushel of apples to run and give her a hug. But still, nothing happened! This one is a stumper, though perhaps Daryl had a romantic mental block about Connie because of what happened with Leah.
Leah Shaw (Lynn Collins)
The one post-apocalyptic romantic relationship that Daryl definitely had happened during a time jump. In season 10 (“Find Me”), we learn that Daryl ran away while searching for Rick and lived with a veteran in the woods and her dog, the famous Dog, for about a year. It’s difficult to discern what exactly was so different about Leah in just one episode, but it seems like proximity, stubbornness, and a kindred reclusive spirit won him over. But while Daryl was willing to leave his family of survivors behind and risk it all for her, The Walking Dead was not. She vanished just as he was ready to tell her how he felt. When Leah returned in the final season, she was with an antagonistic group called the Reapers. Long story short, she threatened Maggie and Daryl killed her. So much for that happily ever after.
It’s important to note that the flashback episode was shot during the early, pre-vaccine days of the pandemic. So the physical aspects of Daryl and Leah’s relationship are implied only. The reason we don’t see Daryl and Leah even kiss on screen was health and safety related. Convenient, perhaps, but understandable.
Isabelle Carriere (Clémence Poésy)
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, the spinoff that whisked the titular character off to France, introduced yet another person who connects on a deep level with Daryl. In season 1, Daryl and Isabelle shared some intimate conversations, an “only one bed” scenario, and a charged sponge bath. But nothing explicit, in a sexual or clarity sense, has happened between them.
What’s interesting about Isabelle, aside from Poésy’s soulful performance, is how you can draw parallels between her ex-partner, relationship with her sister, and alternating sense of hope and nihilism to the women in Daryl’s past who came before her. She’s even a leader raising a child whose deceased biological parents were having an affair behind her back, like Rick!
Beth and Leah are dead. Connie is an ocean away. Carol is on the way. Rick is, again, very loved-up and married to Michonne. Is Isabelle the lasting, meaningful, passionate romantic interest for Daryl that we’ve been waiting for? (If that’s even a thing you’re waiting for, at this point; I obviously gave up the fight.) Or will it fizzle out and go nowhere, like all the ones that came before? If there’s one lesson to impart from all of this, it’s to not get your hopes up. That post-apocalyptic, can’t-be-pinned-down, lone-wolf image is just way too tempting.
