The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2's long awaited reunion is thrilling but flawed

And that's probably a good thing, given how the main show ended.

But then the first season of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon ended with a surprise reveal. McBride, who had very publicly left the spin-off a few months prior, suddenly popped up in a post-credits scene that confirmed Carol would now be in the series, after all. And not just as a bit player either.

What had once just been Daryl's show is now subtitled The Book of Carol, a suitably dramatic yet nonsensical name that promises equal billing for McBride. And boy does it deliver on that front.

The temptation to immediately reunite Carol and Daryl must have been strong, despite the distance between them. After all, their relationship was the original inspiration behind this spinoff, and it's arguably the most popular and well-fleshed out still across this entire franchise. But thankfully, the writers avoided making the same mistake made by the team behind Rick and Michonne's The Ones Who Live.

There, Grimes and his katana-wielding wife were first reunited in awkwardly written dream sequences before their actual reunion happened for real in the flesh. But here, three out of this season's six episodes are dedicated to the journey Carol embarks on to find Daryl, despite how much the odds are stacked against her.

Carol is nothing if not resourceful though, so it's not long before she tricks a plane owner into flying across the Atlantic with her. Ash (Hamish Patel) lost his son to a hungry zombie attack a few years prior, so Carol pretends that she needs the plane to go find her missing daughter in France. Except her child is actually a 55 year old motorbike enthusiast with greasy locks and a love of crossbows. Ash doesn't need to know that though, so off they go with a tank of petrol and a dream.

The second episode takes Carol and Ash to Greenland, where they need to patch up a leak in the plane. There, they encounter some reindeer stew and a pair of survivors who inevitably turn out to be a threat, because that's how we always roll now, over a decade into the zombie apocalypse. Some freaky vegetative walkers do pop out of the ground at one point though, startling us out of admiring the gorgeous landscape.

It's a shame that new variants like these don't appear as much this time around, because these zombie twists were a big draw in season one, helping to set Daryl's show apart from everything that's come before. In fact, there's much more emphasis on the past in general when it comes to season two.

Throughout these first three episodes especially, The Book of Carol expertly balances past chapters of trauma with the badass killer she's become, reminding us that there is a vulnerable, bereft mother buried deep still under Carol's hardened persona and addiction to lying at any given opportunity.

McBride, who's always been one of this franchise's best performers by far, embodies these contrasts as ably as ever, making it genuinely quite emotional when Carol finally lets down her guard and cries in Daryl's arms as they reunite. Reedus taps into that connection, too, reminding us that the pair share just as much chemistry in real life as their characters do on screen.

As inevitable as their reunion is, The Book of Carol wrings as much emotion as it can out of the moment they first spot each other amidst the chaos around them. A kind of normalcy returns then as the pair slip back into their old ways almost immediately, something which long-time fans will instantly relish. There's love, but there's also shorthand jokes and the kind of bickering you'd expect from people who have been through everything that they've endured together.

What's different this time around, though, is Daryl's new connection with Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) and Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi), the boy who may or may not be humanity's saviour in this zombie buffet the world has become. Carol can't quite understand why Daryl cares so much about them when Walking Dead mainstays like Judith are waiting for him back home in the US.

This tension speaks to wider tensions within the show itself too. By bringing Carol in so prominently, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon no longer feels quite as unique and separate to the other shows as it once did. Reworking the series to accommodate McBride is a big draw for diehard fans of the franchise, and their dynamic together is just as strong as ever, but that means the French supporting cast unfairly get short shrift in season 2.

With Carol's return also returns some of the issues that made the original Walking Dead tough to stick with by the end. That's not McBride's fault by any means, but it's an unfortunate coincidence that callbacks to the flagship show also come now with the same kind of pacing issues and unremarkable villains that came to define those twilight years.

While Daryl Dixon's first season held onto a very clear through-line, getting Laurent to the safety of the Nest, season 2 muddles the plot with two separate but equally boring factions who each want to get their hands on Daryl and the boy. With all this going on, there's also less time for Reedus to stand out, despite proving himself to be a very capable leading man in the show's first season.

Still, it's undeniably thrilling to see Daryl and Carol back together again, to see this spin-off become the show it was always supposed to be, and now that the logistics of getting them back together have been sorted, there's still potential to make something truly special in Daryl (and Carol's) already confirmed third season.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2 will arrive on Sky Max and NOW on 4th October – find out more about how to sign up for Sky TV.

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