When AMC's The Walking Dead debuted in 2010, one character stood out among the rest in
a big way — Daryl Dixon. Daryl, arguably, has come the farthest of any figure on The
Walking Dead, and stands as a completely different man than he was at the onset of the series.
Daryl grew up in an abusive household with terrible parents, and had only his older brother,
Merle to look up to.
However, Merle is a bigoted criminal, so Daryl didn't exactly have a great upbringing. The
brothers lost touch, but reconnected after their father died. By the time the first walker
came around, they were drifters operating on the wrong side of the law, and relying
on the survivalist skills they learned growing up in the mountains of northern Georgia.
When audiences are first introduced to Daryl, he and his brother had linked up with Shane
and his group of survivors, living on the outskirts of Atlanta.
While Daryl is out hunting, Merle leads the group into the city, where they rescue Rick
Grimes. Moments later, Merle gets a little too racist and violent for anyone's liking,
forcing Rick to handcuff him to a roof.
"Let me process this. You say you handcuffed my brother to a roof! And you left him there!"
When they get back to camp, Daryl demands an expedition be taken to rescue his brother.
However, when they do, they realize that Merle managed to escape. Accepting the situation,
Daryl sticks around and accompanies the group to the CDC for answers about the outbreak.
All they learn, however, is that the virus is worse than they thought.
So far, Daryl has been nothing but the group's most surly member, armed with the smartest
weapon. That starts to change in season two, when after being separated from his brother
long enough, his empathetic side starts to show.
The group is forced to stop on the highway when a herd of walkers emerges. In the ruckus,
Carol's 12-year old daughter Sophia goes missing in the woods. Daryl spends half the season
taking the situation personally, and using his superior tracking skills to try and find
the girl.
At one point, a fall leads to a near-life threatening injury that puts a stop to his
efforts. Although the search for Sophia would ultimately end with the realization that she
had been turned into a walker shortly after getting lost, his willingness to find her
endeared him to both Carol and the rest of the group.
This happened to coincide with Rick losing his faith in his right-hand-man, Shane.
"What happened, Rick? I thought you weren't the good guy anymore. Ain't that what you
said?"
The two came to fatal blows, with Shane dead.
Rick begins to lean more heavily on Daryl. Soon afterward, when the farm they're staying
at is overrun by a zombie herd, Daryl manages to escape with Carol, who says he should be
the one leading. However, Daryl shuts that down and declares his allegiance to Rick.
This allegiance is almost immediately tested when the group encounters their first human
villain, the Governor.
During season three, Daryl helps the group take over a prison that becomes one of the
better safe havens they've discovered. However, after a tragedy sees Rick's wife, Lori, killed
just after giving birth, Rick mentally checks out, forcing Daryl to step up as the de facto
leader.
It's also at this time that the group learns of the threat posed by the Governor and his
community, Woodbury.
Daryl's new role in the group is tested, when it turns out Merle has been surviving in Woodbury.
It's actually Merle who chooses Daryl over the Governor. The two escape back to the prison
where, of course, Merle is unwelcome.
Daryl leaves with his brother, but he's a changed man, and can no longer abide Merle's
ways. He returns to the prison just in time to help thwart the Governor's attack.
Realizing that he'll never be accepted by his little brother's new group, Merle plans
an assassination attempt on the Governor that ultimately fails. Daryl arrives moments too
late to save his brother, and is forced to kill him in zombie form — essentially killing
his old life in the process.
With the death of Merle, Daryl returns to the colony at the prison. His ability to scavenge
enough food and supplies for everyone doesn't go unnoticed by the citizens, who are otherwise
unable to take care of themselves. Daryl spends most of his time outside the prison walls,
going on runs, until the Governor fatefully returns to take vengeance on Rick.
"You and your people, you have 'til sundown to get outta here. Or they die."
Daryl proves to be one of the strongest combatants in a fight against humans, even managing to
cleverly use a grenade to take out a tank. The battle is fierce, leaving the prison in
ruins, and the survivors on the run. He escapes with Beth, who has just watched her father,
Herschel , get executed. They bond, but they're eventually separated when Beth is kidnapped.
Daryl then meets a group known as "the Claimers," led by a vicious man named Joe who operates
under a high-stakes "finders keepers" mentality. They represent everything that Daryl once
was, before the apocalypse, but he travels with them all the same. However, when the
Claimers discover Rick, Michonne and Carl on the road, and threaten to murder them,
Daryl remembers who he is, and helps kill the Claimers off.
Until now, Daryl's story has been one of growth — from an outlaw to a key member of what's
left of the human race. In season five, that all changes.
He and Rick make their way to Terminus , only to find out that it's filled with murderous
cannibals. The group escapes and leaves the area in ruins. With the prison gone and Terminus
being a lie, the survivors set off back on the road with limited supplies.
While this is par-for-the-course for Daryl, life on the road brings about several hardships.
Chief among them is the death of Beth, who Daryl managed to track down after her kidnapping,
only for her to sacrifice her life to kill the leader of her captors.
Daryl and the gang begin walking aimlessly trying to survive. Fortunately, a put-together
man named Aaron finds them and promises that he can bring them to a safe haven called Alexandria.
Reluctantly, the group agrees to check the place out — and they discover a suburban
neighborhood that managed to fence itself off at the onset of the apocalypse.
While the other survivors start to fall back into their pre-apocalypse life, Daryl refuses
to get friendly with anyone. Clearly, he's not one who will be easily domesticated.
Realizing that Daryl hasn't been settling into normalcy like the rest of the group,
Aaron asks Daryl to join him as a recruiter for the community.
In his new role, he's instrumental in leading a nearby herd away from Alexandria, but at
one point he's separated from Sasha and Abraham on the road.
"Now pull the cobwebs out of your ass and move!"
Daryl also encounters a small group that includes a man named Dwight who hints that he's on
the run from a terrible group called the Saviors.
Daryl manages to escape, but stops short of killing Dwight and the women he's with, thanks
to his newly discovered empathy.
Unfortunately, Dwight turns on him again, robbing him of his crossbow, vest and motorcycle.
Daryl gets his revenge when he catches up with Sasha and Abraham, and blows up a group
of Saviors with an RPG.
This marked the first shots fired in what would eventually be an all-out war with the
Saviors. Soon, the Alexandrians meet another group from a safe haven known as Hilltop,
which is already under the control of the Saviors.
Already battle-hardened, the Alexandrians take out a Savior outpost for their new friends.
As payback, Dwight returns and kills someone close to Daryl, leading the headstrong tracker
into a trap that puts him and the group face-to-face with their leader, Negan .
Although Daryl has taken great strides to no longer be the hothead he once was, his
old ways peek through during the initial meeting with Negan. After the villain infamously bashes
Abraham's head in, he begins to taunt Rosita , prompting Daryl to punch him. Negan retaliates
by brutally murdering Glenn, too — and he also takes Daryl as a prisoner to his Sanctuary.
Daryl is kept in a dark room, and fed nothing but dog food sandwiches, while the song "Easy
Street" plays on repeat. His main prison guard is Dwight, who takes a sadistic pleasure in
trying to break Daryl into becoming one of Negan's loyal Saviors.
Eventually, another Savior lets Daryl go. Daryl beats a guard to death on his way out,
then makes his way to Hilltop and reunites with his friends. From there, he becomes part
of a team that goes to broker peace at the Kingdom, where he's granted asylum by Ezekiel
.
However, when it becomes clear that he's not great at diplomacy, Daryl leaves the safe
haven to join the fight at the Hilltop.
Dwight eventually defects from the Saviors, prompting Daryl to return to Alexandria, and
join the first battle against Negan.
With the war in full swing, season eight opens with Daryl and Rick putting the Saviors on
their toes. But the rebels soon find themselves evenly matched, thanks to the clever ingenuity
of Eugene, who has defected to the Saviors.
Rick hopes to use diplomacy to push for Negan's surrender, but Daryl goes rogue. He leads
a team to break a hole in the wall of the Sanctuary, killing several civilians in the
process. Unfortunately, it's still not enough to stop Negan and the Saviors. He returns
to Alexandria, just in time to help people survive the retaliatory siege.
Rick loses his son in the battle, and is briefly unable to lead the Alexandrians to safety
due to his grief. Daryl single-handedly leads the survivors to Hilltop, where they mount
an effective defense against the Saviors.
While everyone else celebrates, Daryl deals with the reality that these back-to-back conflicts
have left them with limited ammo, while Eugene builds more ammo for the Saviors.
If Negan needs bullets to end this war then by-ginger he's gonna get 'em."
Moving fast, Daryl leads an unsuccessful attempt at kidnapping Eugene. Luckily, it turns out
Eugene was never truly a defector at all, having manufactured bullets that will backfire.
And just like that, the war was won.
A year and a half after the war with Negan, tensions are high. Daryl's plan to kill all
the Saviors and Negan doesn't jibe with Rick, who is adamant about having them join their
society.
During this time, Daryl has been in charge of Negan's old Sanctuary, but he yields control
over to Carol, and begins helping Rick with construction projects designed to further
unite the remaining colonies.
Unfortunately, their differing ideologies come to a head just in time for Rick to seemingly
die in an explosion while defending everyone from a walker herd. With the group safe and
united, Daryl is forced to grapple with the loss of his best friend.
The show picks up six years later, with Daryl having regressed in a big way, living in the
woods with a dog. Fortunately, he's convinced to return to the world by Carol, just in time
to encounter a new threat: The Whisperers, a group that wears the skin of zombies. Daryl
ends up feeling some empathy for a girl named Lydia, the daughter of the Whisperer's leader,
Alpha.
"I just want my daughter. I know you have her."
Being a victim of abuse himself, he recognizes Lydia's situation, and risks war with the
new faction just to keep her safe. The ensuing conflict kills several of the colonies' people,
but Daryl finds a daughter figure along the way.
By season 10, Daryl and Carol's relationship becomes the core one of the series, even if
they spend much of the season at odds with one another. This occurs when Carol returns
from an extended absence and she's still hellbent on getting revenge against Alpha for killing
her adopted son.
Daryl is aware that Alpha has a massive walker herd she's wielding over them, so he does
everything he can to keep the peace and maintain their borders.
But when a satellite crash forces the survivors to cross the border to combat spreading fires,
hostilities emerge. Seeing an opportunity to exact her revenge, Carol betrays Daryl's
trust, and frees Negan from a seven-year-long captivity.
Negan finds his way to the Whisperers and kills Alpha. Daryl comes across Negan in the
woods, shortly afterward, and when they're accosted by Whisperers, Negan manages to prove
his loyalty to Daryl by killing them.
Daryl realizes that he needs to take out the horde, not the Whisperers. Meanwhile, driven
mad by the death of Alpha, her right-hand man Beta leads the horde against the remaining
survivors.
And the final showdown with the Whisperers is at hand.
With the attack from Beta imminent and Daryl at odds with his most trusted ally, things
don't look great for the survivors going into the final showdown with the Whisperers.
Fortunately, Daryl is never allowed to be a lone wolf for too long. Daryl shows Judith
Grimes the ropes before stumbling upon exactly what he was looking for.
Together, they take out a Whisperer who admits she was trying to escape Beta. When the Whisperers
surround everyone in the Tower, Beta destroys their plan to lure the herd away with loudspeakers.
Daryl then leads the survivors on a mission to murder the remaining Whisperers.
When Beta is about to finish Negan, Daryl comes out of nowhere and stabs both his eyes.
And so the war with the Whisperers is done and, of course, Daryl comes out on top. He
even makes amends with Carol, which is good because he'll need all the help he can get
keeping his people safe for whatever comes next.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite
stuff are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss
a single one.