The second season of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, known as The Book of Carol, is finally here. And it delivers. While the story continues to follow lead character Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) as he journeys through France and struggles with his desire to go back home to America, there’s a parallel storyline. His best friend Carol (Melissa McBride) is on the hunt for him. Since he hasn’t checked in, she’s concerned that he needs help.
She travels to Maine, his last known location, where she discovers where he likely went. As Carol is wont to do, she resourcefully tracks down a way to get across the ocean into an entirely different country. But her journey is far more about physically traveling to a new destination. She’s also facing demons and finding closure that’s a long time coming since the original series.
Carol’s Hallucinations Are Back
As Carol takes down enemies, steals a car, and finds her way to a young man with a small plane, she shows herself to be the same strong woman she has been since she lost her husband and child and started coming into her own. But she’s also doing things she never could do before. As she explores her new surroundings with Ash (Manish Dayal) and he decides to let her stay for the night, he walks her to a barn at the back of his property where he’ll allow her to sleep.
She pauses when he approaches the doors and stops, staring stone-faced. A hallucination shows an undead Sophia (Madison Lintz) ambling out of the barn, as she did way back in season two of The Walking Dead. Clearly suffering from PTSD after losing her only biological child, followed by several other officially and unofficially adopted children, it’s as though Carol finally has a moment to breathe and reflect on the most emotionally wrenching experience she ever faced.
Despite going through so many hardships since, including being shunned for burning sick humans alive, executing a mentally ill young girl to save baby Judith, and seeing her adoptive son Henry’s (Macsen Lintz) zombified head on a pike, losing Sophia is the event that arguably damaged Carol beyond repair. That was her only connection to the world before, the only person inextricably tied to her.
It’s no accident that Daryl is the one who was there for Carol when Sophia emerged from the barn. He held her up and urged her not to look, desperate to protect her. Remember, this is long before they had forged a deeper bond, and before Daryl had ever shown a softer side. It was a pivotal moment not only for Carol but also for their friendship.
Sophia Has a Major Presence Without Being There
Even though Sophia died more than a decade ago and has been mentioned sparingly since in the original series, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol, finally focuses on Carol’s long-held repressed feelings about the situation. She’s still gutted, but she has been forced to put on a strong front for more than a decade as the group fought with enemies living and dead. Now with nothing but herself with whom to contend, Carol is finally exhaling and facing the feelings and trauma she has held onto for so long.
In another scene, Carol sits down for dinner with Ash where the young man sets a small makeshift vase on the table with a Cherokee rose in it that he grew in his greenhouse. Carol stares at it, once again stopped right in her tracks. Ash asks if she’s allergic, but it’s clear Carol has something else on her mind. “They represent hope, you know,” Ash tells Carol. But she’s hearing another voice in her head.
It cuts to a flashback of when Daryl picked this very same flower for Carol while they were looking for the missing Sophia, telling her a story of how the flower started to grow right where a mother’s tears fell. In one of the most tender early exchanges between the pair of to-become best friends, Daryl tells Carol he “believed this one bloomed for your little girl.”
Carol takes this as a sign that a plan that was likely already brewing in her mind about how to get Ash to come on board with her was worth enacting. She lies to Ash, who had reluctantly shared his grief over losing his young son, telling him that she lost her daughter years ago. That part is the truth, of course, but what she says next couldn’t be further from it.
Carol Has Become Ruthlessly Dedicated
Carol claims her daughter Sophia had traveled to France with her father right before the apocalypse hit. She hadn’t heard from them and believed Sophia could potentially still be alive. Even if there was only a slight chance that Sophia was still around, surely Ash could understand how crucial it was for Carol to try and find her. It was a powerful lie that played on Ash’s emotions and manipulated him, proving that Carol has become more cut-throat and purpose-driven than ever. But it also showed how important Daryl is to her, such that she’d be able to equate his importance to that of her daughter.
Nonetheless, using Sophia’s name also conjures up sad memories and bubbling feelings to the surface that Carol hasn’t dealt with in some time. In an interesting later exchange with Ash when he’s mulling over the decision to help her or not, he asks Carol what has changed now that makes her want to go find Sophia all these years later.
“I couldn’t keep waiting, feeling stuck,” she answers, clearly with much more weighing on her mind than just Daryl. “I had to move forward, I had to try.” It’s possible she’s also referencing her trauma over losing Sophia a dozen years prior, her guilt about letting her fragile young daughter become lost, afraid, and alone, and the fact that she has never truly found closure in the situation.
This Moment Is 12 Years In The Making
Based on the timeline of The Walking Dead and this spin-off series, it has been about 12 years since Sophia was tragically discovered to have been bitten by a walker and turned. No one knows what happened to her after she ran into the woods and went missing. No one knows how long she lived, and where she went after getting bitten. Based on the state of her body, she was able to escape being fully ravaged by walkers and go into hiding as the infection took over.
Afraid and alone, the already timid Sophia probably went through a terrifying several days as the bite infected her bloodstream, causing the fever and her eventual demise. The thought of Sophia being in this state with no one around to help, knowing her mother was unable to find her, or thinking she wasn't even trying, has haunted Carol since. But she has never spoken about it. While she has alluded to her daughter on occasion, she has never fully broken down and discussed her pain and grief. She retreated into herself after Sophia died, then emerged a woman who was almost unrecognizable from her former self.
It’s refreshing that this series is finally tackling this topic in such a poignant and fitting way. The way Carol shows how much she’s still mourning the loss of Sophia and using that pain to her benefit by manipulating someone else shows just how far she has come. The old Carol would never have done that. The new Carol doesn’t even blink before considering such a move.
Carol knows what it’s like to lose a child and she’s finally coming to terms with the loss she suffered so many years ago. Fittingly, she’s finding help through a stranger who has suffered a similar loss and doesn’t even realize how he’s helping her. It’s the closure fans have been waiting to see for so long, proof that Carol never, ever forgot about Sophia. But most importantly, she has never processed that loss the way she should have, and it’s bubbling to the surface now in ways fans have never seen. Fans can’t wait to see how this storyline progresses through the six-episode season.
