So why now? Why Isabelle? Before we start declaring Daryl and Isabelle as the next Rick and Michonne, Reedus warned EW that fans shouldn’t read too much into Disabelle (for now).
“I’ll tell you my interpretation of it, is that he’s never got to do this before and he doesn’t know what it means,” said Reedus. “He’s been running and fighting his whole life, and is asking himself: Have I been doing this wrong? Should I have just found someone and settled down in a farm and just had those moments of life before I die? Or is the fighting and fighting the way I’m supposed to go? He’s questioning the whole big picture.”
After so many years of getting to know the character, it feels like Daryl has earned his romantic stripes. As for why Daryl and Leah never got to this all-important stage, their lack of intimacy was a side-effect of the Covid pandemic.
However, it doesn’t sound like they were ever destined to go much further as Collins told CinemaBlend in 2022, “When I was talking to some of the writers, they were like, ‘Oh, I don’t think we would have put the kiss in anyway.’” Echoing the sentiments of many fans, Collins added, “There’s this sacred bubble of energy around the Daryl character, and as a fan, I’m with it, I get it…”
Collins joked about how romance is difficult when brain-hungry munchers are constantly hunting you, reiterating how relationships in this world take a lot of hard work. And then, of course, the writers took Leah’s arc in a very different direction for the final season of The Walking Dead.
Even though the main focus of Daryl Dixon season 2 is Daryl’s reunion with Carol, there could be a new golden couple in town. The question is, will it be a case of three’s a crowd? Despite Carol’s motivations toward Daryl seeming nothing more than platonic, remember that she previously asked if he wanted to fool around in season 3’s “Seed.” There were similar calls for Daryl and Connie (Lauren Ridloff) to hook up, with him saying, “It’s not like that,” when she asked about his feelings toward her in season 10. Most controversially, Reedus confirmed to the Mirror that Darabont had once planned for Daryl to be gay and how the former showrunner problematically referred to how he wanted the character to be “prison gay.”