In a new interview, actor Norman Reedus has shared some very preliminary first details about his upcoming The Walking Dead spin-off centered on his character, Daryl Dixon. Until April this year, the show was expected to center on Daryl and Melissa McBride’s character, Carol Peletier, but she abruptly exited the show over “creative differences.”
“I’m gonna go on a mission and I’m excited,” Reedus told Sirius XM’s Jose Mangin on Octane. “It’s gonna be much different than [The Walking Dead]. I think it’s gonna look different. It’s gonna feel different. It’s kind of its own thing, you know, so I’m excited to get a hold of it.” Check out the full interview excerpt below–on the plus side, this interview was also captured on video, which means you can see clearly that Reedus seems just fine after being temporarily sidelined by a “minor” concussion while on the show’s set back in March.
Reedus further elaborated that he isn’t being intentionally coy about the spin-off. There are things about it that even he doesn’t know for certain. Said Reedus, “People think I have all this power and I’m like… I really don’t. I’m just an actor for hire, really.”
The Daryl spin-off is one of many expected to branch off The Walking Dead once the latter wraps. Still on the way are a set of feature films for Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), the anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead, and the most recently announced Isle of the Dead–which will feature Negan and Maggie, and debut sometime in 2023. Fear the Walking Dead has been going strong since 2015.
In an op-ed published in March, GameSpot’s Mark Delaney argues that the spin-off announcements–there are a total of five spin-offs, now–are “killing the final season’s buzz.” The Walking Dead is winding its way to a finale after 12 years and nearly 200 episodes.