The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 3, Episode 7 Review

Warning: This review contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’s season 3 finale.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’s season 3 finale doesn’t start to feel like a finale until its last 10 minutes, and by then, it’s much too late for a satisfying ending. My biggest disappointment of this season is that Daryl and Carol have been kept apart for most of it. What made season 2 an improvement over season 1 was reuniting this iconic duo, but in season 3, Daryl has been off on various rescue missions while Carol has stayed back to monitor the drama in Solaz del Mar.

It seems like they should’ve been reunited for the final episode, but for the first three quarters of this finale, Daryl and Carol are still being kept apart in their own stories. It’s already been confirmed that Daryl Dixon season 4 will continue their Spanish adventures, so this isn’t really supposed to be an ending to this story, but it is supposed to be a climactic culmination, and it fails at that.

Daryl Dixon’s season 3 finale is a bit like The Bear’s season 3 finale. Since this story arc is being stretched into season 4, the ending of season 3 doesn’t really provide any closure. It just feels like another run-of-the-mill episode, like there should be another one next week. This is becoming a regular issue in the sunk-cost streaming era — we saw it a couple of weeks ago in the Alien: Earth finale and the Peacemaker finale.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’s Season 3 Finale Has Some Great Isolated Moments

While it doesn’t satisfy as a season finale, there are some great isolated moments in this episode. There’s an interesting sequence with a post-apocalyptic Eyes Wide Shut cult. Daryl dons a creepy mask to disguise himself as one of the waiters so he can find and rescue Justina. The King of Spain and his rich friends are glugging wine in a lavish dining hall, watching a puppet show with zombies on strings. This is kind of a rehash of the zombie orchestra way back in season 1, but it’s a nice development on that unsettling conceit.

There’s some fun “eat the rich” commentary when the zombie puppets escape from their strings and feast on their upper-crust audience, like an undead French Revolution.

Not only is this an exciting backdrop for Daryl’s latest rescue; it’s also a neat bit of satire. There’s some fun “eat the rich” commentary when the zombie puppets escape from their strings and feast on their upper-crust audience, like an undead French Revolution. There’s some stunning cinematography on Daryl’s ride back to Solaz, too, with one particularly striking shot of a giant bull statue draped in fog.

The Finale’s Climactic Action & Dramatic Payoffs Are All Crammed Into The Last 10 Minutes

By Then, It’s Too Little Too Late

We’re treated to one last great action sequence when Daryl arrives back in Solaz just in time to save Carol from her public execution, followed by a heartfelt reunion and the baddie getting his comeuppance, but it all feels like too little too late. All this climactic action and all these dramatic payoffs are crammed into the last 10 minutes, when they really should’ve had a whole episode of their own to make the appropriate impact.

The season leaves off on a cliffhanger when Daryl and Carol’s boat is set ablaze, leaving them stranded in Spain once again, set to a beautiful Spanish-language cover of “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails. But this was already spoiled when it was revealed that Daryl Dixon season 4 had started filming in Spain, so we knew they weren’t leaving any time soon.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon is streaming on AMC+.

This season of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon hasn’t been terrible. There have been some highlights that made it worthwhile — the battle scene at Solaz, Stephen Merchant’s cameo in the premiere episode, Daryl’s Navajo Joe moment on the train — but on the whole, this season was just fine. Maybe that’s good enough for the third season of the fifth spinoff of a 15-year-old franchise, but I’d like to see them aim a little higher next time.