When The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon first came out on AMC, my mom watched it before I did. At the time, I asked her how the fan-favorite crossbow-wielding character made it from the East Coast of America to France while living in an apocalyptic wasteland filled with zombies. "Some bad guys got him," she replied simply. On paper, it's a funny explanation for a sudden, drastic change of scenery over the course of a decade in a franchise that usually just moves its characters around in ways that make sense. However, after getting to know the show, it became clear that she was right: Daryl's big move comes down to introducing new villains whose misdeeds take place in an area adjacent to one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Behind the scenes, Reedus and all of the returning cast and crew members from the flagship series also relocated to France for filming — no doubt a big change after 12 years spent filming mostly in Atlanta, Georgia. The "bad guys" explanation is actually deceptively simple, as the show spends much of its first season dancing around the details of how Daryl ended up overseas before revealing the backstory (and strange motivations) of his captors in episode 5. "The Book of Carol," as the second season is titled, reintroduces Carol Pelletier (Melissa McBride), who was Daryl's partner in survival for the greater part of The Walking. Dead." By the end of Season 2, the pair have reunited, but they've also left France behind. It's another long story from a show that likes to tell long stories.

"The Walking Dead" started dropping hints about what Daryl's spinoff series might be getting into long before it ended. In the season 10 episode, Daryl retreats to nature, the place where he is most comfortable, to try to find out what happened to Rick (Andrew Lincoln) when he supposedly died. There, he meets a woman named Leah (Lynn Collins) and her dog, Air, Dog, both of whom he falls for. Of course, this being the darkest show in the world, Leah later revealed some dangerous tendencies and sketchy allegiances, and Daryl ended up having to kill her.

The last two seasons of The Walking Dead tell us everything we need to know about the Daryl Dixon series without actually introducing its plot or characters. Late-era Walking Dead Daryl is a loner, but he's also capable of showing love and still has a strong bond with Carol. Also, he's a hero all the way, even when he almost gets killed. All of this sets the stage for his final exit from the main series when, in the series finale, Daryl learns that Rick is still alive. At the end of season 11, he decides to hit the road once again to find his old friend.

Of course, Daryl doesn't appear in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, which focuses on Rick, because by the time Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Rick reunite on screen on that show, we've already seen that Daryl gets whisked away to a completely different continent in its own spin-off. Fans are shown Daryl passed out on a small boat at the very beginning of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, but the full story behind the moment isn't explained until episode 5.

While on a quest to find Rick, Daryl runs out of gas in Maine and decides to help some people catch walkers in exchange for gas to get home. The man who works at the gas station, Juno (John Alles), is the real deal, and after he kills a guy named TJ (Martin Martinez) in cold blood, Daryl confronts him. A group later revealed to be called the Force of the Living (or Pouvoir Du Vivant) capture Daryl and Juno after their fight and take them aboard a ship manned by their Parisian squad. On board, Daryl discovers that the leader of Pouvoir Du Vivant, Marion Genet (Anne Charrier), is conducting twisted experiments on different walker variants in order to better understand the mechanisms of the virus.

Later, the whole thing gets a bit Victor Hugo (and also a little Mad Max, for various reasons) as Jeanne's own flashback reveals that she was an abused museum worker who went on strike before the virus appeared and is using the Pouvoir organization to claim the power amassed by the upper classes at the start of the apocalypse. However, the group is violent and sometimes ruthless, and when Daryl and Juno try to escape the ship, it is torn to pieces by a walker who is keeping it for experiments. The reluctant leader, Daryl led a shipboard mutiny and played dead on a small escape ship after colliding with Gene. For some reason, the Pouvoir crew do their experiments on a ship in international waters, so they get Daryl most of the way to France before he ditches the big ship and makes the final leg of the journey alone.

Although McBride was originally announced as co-lead for this spinoff, she had to pull out from 1 season due to scheduling issues. Her voice is first heard in the first season, when she and Daryl have a brief conversation over an undetected radio link. In her first appearance in the flesh on the show, she ran over a man riding Daryl's motorcycle in Maine, playing innocent before she hit him with a wrench and trapped him in the trunk of her car. The show's first season ends on a bad note, with Carol riding Daryl's bike, hot on his trail.

However, she is in Maine and it is not easy to drive to France a few years after the end of the world. Carol gets a little information about Daryl's location from the guys at the gas station, but her mode of transportation turns out to be a small plane piloted by a man named Ash Patel (Manish Dayal). Carol meets Ash at his home, and although the two bond, he is unwilling to leave the place that has apparently been turned into a shrine to his dead son's memory. Carol has always been willing to do whatever it takes to get what she wants, and she does so here, when she lies and tells Ash that her daughter Sophia (who definitely turned into a zombie and was the victim of a classic Rick Grimes headbutt in "The Walking Dead" season 2) is alive in France.

The plan works, and Ash flies Carol to Greenland. From there, she continues to France, where she eventually reunites with Daryl despite the apparent lack of Google Maps available in this post-apocalyptic hell. However, the pair ends Season 2 with a plan to head to England Variety reported that the third season of the series is being filmed in Spain.

"The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon" is currently airing on AMC+.