Daryl Dixon's New Villain Will Force The Walking Dead to Finally Fix Its Big Negan Problem

At San Diego Comic Con 2025, AMC officially announced that The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon will officially come to an end in Season 4. The cast (Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride) and crew (TWD boss Scott M. Gimple, showrunner David Zabel and executive producer Greg Nicotero) promise a "satisfying ending" that'll wrap up Daryl and Carol's arc in Spain. Though in a statement joining the surprising news, Reedus assures that "Daryl's journey is far from over." Whether that means a sequel-spinoff series (similar to Dexter: Resurrection) is in the works or Daryl's definite ending teases future adventures for the character off-screen, there are still a couple more seasons until Walking Dead fans have to say goodbye to the European landscape of the series. For now, there are new troubles awaiting Daryl and Carol as they head to France.

As part of the tradition of The Walking Dead, the spinoff released a full-length trailer for Season 3, now revealing more about the story and what lies ahead for the protagonists. The trailer hints that Daryl and Carol will get to Spain in a similar fashion to how Daryl got to France and jump-started this whole ordeal: by shipwreck. Only this time, they're accompanied by Julian (played by Stephen Merchant), who claims to be the last Englishman in the country, disputing the theory that England survived the apocalypse by shutting down its borders. Arriving in Spain, they're taken in by a village at war with the "King" of Spain, a man who's already far more terrifying than Madam Genet and her enhanced walker experiments. And it seems like this time, The Walking Dead norands characters will ignore the heinous crimes of this villain, just like they did with Negan.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 3 Trailer Teases a New Negan in Spain

Just like how there are overlaps between how Daryl and Carol got to Spain vs. how the former character got to France, there are already similarities between the premise of the Spain storyline and the France storyline. But then again, this is only the trailer, so audiences can't be too hasty to judge. A man named Fede welcomes Daryl and Carol to a town called Solaz del Mar, presumably making him the leader of it. The town is full of survivors who are attempting to rebuild after the zombie apocalypse ravaged the world. They presumably still put on celebrations of their cultures, have little trouble getting food, and don't have walker invasions too often. But this sense of safety is created by a man who is also taking it away, the so-called "King" of Spain.

It's yet to be revealed the extent of what this King does to exert control over this town, and whether he has control over the entire country or if it's just a vanity title. But what the trailer shows is that he takes the village's women in exchange for a truck full of guns. One of the townspeople, Antonio, calls the deal extortion, whereas the King's group or other villagers, in denial of the truth, call it security. Sadly, it makes sense why terrified people would cling on to this false security. The trailer shows that despite being relatively protected behind walls, they do still have problems with walkers on the outside.

There also appear to be at least two human enemy groups, per the Daryl Dixon panel at SDCC. One of them is the royalist movement rising in Spain, more than likely referring to the self-proclaimed King. The other are the Primitivos, a group of nihilists who weaponize walkers. Viewers could bet these are the people who catapult flaming walkers onto the village in the trailer. So, while on the surface it seems like the village has it good, their true circumstances suggest that they've had to make sacrifices to secure normalcy in an unusual world.

The oppressive pact is far from humane, though, leaning into the realities of what the apocalypse would allow with the absence of law and order: human trafficking, kidnapping and possibly coerced rape. The list could go on. The Walking Dead viewers have already seen this play out before with Negan, when he pulled the same exact card on the communities of Alexandria, Hilltop, the Kingdom and Oceanside. Only then, the AMC series failed to give the sensitive storyline the awareness it needed.

One Part of Negan’s Past Makes It Impossible to Redeem Him

An instrumental component of what made Negan the feared villain he was in the comics and the television show was that he committed acts that were considered obscene by the previous and current world's standards. Many fans like to debate whether Negan was ever truly the "bad guys," saying if the show was from Negan's perspective from the beginning, Rick would be considered the villain for entering a compound and executing multiple Saviors in their sleep.

While it wasn't one of Rick's most upstanding moments, it's a minor felony compared to what Negan did in his spare time to gain power. Negan shepherded a system that used slavery, psychological torture and violent extortion to control parts of Virginia in the United States. He dehumanized Daryl by holding him in a room for days or possibly weeks, forcing him to wear a humiliating outfit and eat dog food while listening to the same song over and over again. He encouraged an environment that accepted people who killed children over the age of 10 for simply fighting against tyranny.

Arguably, the worst of what Negan committed, and most relevant to The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, was his treatment of women. In both the comics and the TV show, Negan had multiple "wives" while he was the leader of the Saviors. Most of the women were in their early to mid-20s; The youngest even looked like she could've been in her late teens. There were a number of reasons why a woman would agree to become one of his wives: they couldn't work in the horrible conditions in his factory, they needed medicine, or they wanted to save someone they loved who broke a rule. In Sherry's case, she "married" Negan so that her husband, Dwight, would be spared after he betrayed Negan. A requirement for being Negan's wife is that they wear black dresses and heels, obey him, never cheat on him, and have sex with him. Though he would say that they could reject his sexual advances at any point, doing so would mean they'd have to start working again or someone they know would get hurt.

The bottom line is that this is, by definition, rape. More specifically, it's coerced rape because the women are given an ultimatum: having sex with Negan or being punished. In a show that touched on murder, pedophilia and cannibalism, Negan's treatment of these women is among the worst. However, The Walking Dead also greatly swept this part of Negan's life under the rug. After Negan's defeat in the Season 8 finale, a recurring argument against his redemption was always that he killed Glenn and numerous other people, all while taunting his victims and those who watched.

All of his wives that survived became background characters from Season 9 onwards, and were never given a voice to speak up against Negan. The exception was Sherry, who talked about her trauma at length on Fear the Walking Dead. But it wasn't until Season 11 that the subject of his wives was brought up on The Walking Dead, by Ezekiel out of all people (making him a true king). It was still a belated favor for a storyline that happened 3–4 seasons prior.

The Walking Dead dug itself into a deeper hole by hiding Negan's dirtiest work with blanket statements about his thoughts on rape. Numerous times throughout the series and The Walking Dead: Dead City, Negan has proclaimed that he's against rape and believes it's one of the foulest disgraces against humanity. But never once does he or anyone else, like Maggie, remind him that he sexually assaulted women in the past. Just because the women were "allowed" to say no doesn't mean they felt like they had a choice.

He created suffocating circumstances so they felt they could only say yes. But if The Walking Dead addressed that, then it would make it much harder to redeem him. Thus, the series took the ignorant route of concealing this part of his past. In some ways, it backfired. Viewers who remember Negan's wives vividly are less on board with his redemption arc because of how horribly The Walking Dead has tried to bury Negan's history with them.

Daryl Dixon Season 3’s Villain Requires More Than Surface-Level Attention

All that being said, Daryl Dixon Seasons 3 and 4 (depending on how long the villain lives) is the perfect time for The Walking Dead to make up for its past mistakes. Daryl and Carol, the former especially, both know what it's like to live under the thumb of a dictator. While Daryl seems less enthusiastic about helping the village at first, according to the trailer, he takes a heavier lead in encouraging people to fight after Carol convinces him to. It's satisfying that a woman is the one who evidently takes the initiative to stand up against the King, even if Daryl is a part of most of the action.

This isn't to say that Daryl Dixon needs to address Negan in relation to what's currently happening in France. Simply just acknowledging and fighting against the King for what he does to the community's women shows that the franchise is becoming more self-aware of the different obstacles female characters face just by being women. But there are also many pitfalls Daryl Dixon Season 3 could find itself in if not mindful of these sensitive storylines. If the King is doing to the women what Negan did to his wives (an alternative would be unlikely but not impossible), the series needs to blatantly call it what it is: rape. The story shouldn't "excuse" the King's actions with a tragic backstory. Villains are allowed to be nuanced -- in fact, this type of characterization should be encouraged. But a villain's traumatic past shouldn't overshadow or justify the sickening crimes of the present.

Also equally important is that Daryl Dixon should avoid the white, American savior complex. This is a problem that keeps coming back like a walker in the spinoff. Daryl and Carol take over the conflicts in these countries so overwhelmingly that it appears that without them, the natives would be a lost cause. Daryl Dixon has inadvertently created a mild American exceptionalism ideology that needs to be squashed. Daryl and Carol might inspire the townspeople in Spain to stand up against the King, but the townspeople should be the ones to actually defeat him. It shouldn't really be that hard to avoid these snags if the writers of Daryl Dixon maintain a certain level of mindfulness that people should have to begin with. Time will tell if the spinoff will defeat these old problems once and for all, or end up making them worse.