The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2 episode 6 recap and review: "Au Revoir Les Enfants"

The season 2 finale of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon has arrived! Although both Losang and Genet are dead, that isn't stopping the survivors of both causes from continuing their mission of finding Laurent. Will Laurent be able to escape via Ash's airplane? Who will the third passenger in the airplane be?

Laurent finally escapes

The episode begins rather quickly, allowing Daryl to have one final conversation with Laurent while playing the guitar and allowing Carol one last attempt to apologize to Ash. In both cases, Daryl and Carol, without speaking to each other, have chosen themselves to stay behind.

What they don't realize is that the remnants of Losang and Genet's group is hot on their trail, finding Fallou and Codron while they search an abandoned mental hospital for supplies. The two manage to survive thanks to a sudden love interest for Fallou (isn't it a little late to be throwing in this last-minute love story?).

While this is happening, Losang's right-hand woman still goes after Laurent but needs Anna's help to find the plane. Anna agrees to help but in exchange, she wants to leave Paris and return home to her family.

Thankfully Anna remains loyal to Laurent and leads the group into a walker trap in the hopes everyone will get killed. Naturally, very few of the bad guys die and unfortunately, Anna's sacrifice costs her life (another amazing character bites the dust).

But the leader in charge has been bit so it's only a matter of time before she turns. She and the group hear Ash's airplane and before long they begin an attack to prevent the plane from taking off. At this point Daryl has been reunited with Fallou and Codron and thanks to their warning, they get the plane ready for takeoff. Everyone agrees that Daryl will stay behind, meaning the third seat in Ash's plane will go to Carol.

A standoff unfolds between Daryl, Codron, and Fallou against the soldiers. After some very dramatic slow-motion scenes and edge-of-your-seat action, Ash and Laurent manage to escape, leaving Daryl and somehow Carol (we don't see when or how she leaves the plane before it takes off) behind.

The last we see of Losang's right-hand woman is her committing suicide, leaving us with no idea as to what will become of Genet's military group.

The journey to England

Considering the episode is only half over, we have to wonder what happens now? Well, not a whole lot.

Daryl, Carol, Fallou, and Codron enlist the help of two travelers who will aid in Daryl and Carol's escape from France to England, where they can hopefully find a way back to America. Let's be honest, the second the couple shows up, we already know it's only a matter of time before they betray everyone because that has been the one consistent thing on this show.

The night before the group leaves, everyone shares stories and heartfelt moments, including Fallou and his new love interest, Codron finally learning the truth about his brother's death and Carol confiding in Daryl about how haunted she is about Sophia's death. The next day, as the group is about to enter the tunnel that will lead them to England, Fallou decides, at the last minute, to stay behind with his love interest (as she won't go with them in the hopes of finding her sister in France).

The group encounters the remains of a military set up in the tunnel. They quickly discover that everyone killed each other due to chemicals released in the air that caused hallucinations (TWD: Dead City did it better). When the group reaches the part of the tunnel where walkers remain covered in bioluminescent residue, the hallucinations begin.

Carol sees Sophia and follows her away from the group, Codron sees a walker as his brother, so when Daryl kills it to save him, Codron freaks out, attacks Daryl, and then wanders off following his walker brother. When the couple betrays Daryl (shocker), taking oxygen masks, and his stuff, Daryl hallucinates Isabelle coming to him to give him the strength he needs to survive.

This includes the reminder of his grandfather who died during the Invasion of Normandy in World War II. Daryl manages to kill the couple and somehow reunite with Carol, who had been wandering, following walker Sophia. Both Daryl and Carol's hallucinations come off like meaningful closure but drag on for far too long and only create the payoff of the episode and season coming to an end. That is literally it.

They have their hallucinations, they find closure, somehow reunite, and continue down the tunnel with oxygen masks as the episode comes to a close. Now that they left their current issues behind them, they can face what comes next head-on.

Season 2 unfortunately doesn't live up to the hype

As a whole, the season did not live up to the hype nor the grandeur of season 1. There were plenty of times when the action really picked up and the plot twists paid off (even if most were obvious).

Genet's past into how she became the woman we later know her to be, was compelling. Watching Codron become a bigger character with the best development in the series thus far was deeply appreciated and needed. The show could have easily killed him off, as it did with practically everyone else, but chose to give him a bigger role. Although the decision to have him wander off in the last episode was questionable.

But with those few positives came a whole lot of negatives, far too many to list but to name a few, Isabelle's death, Carol's ridiculously thick plot armor, Carol's means of getting to France (all the lies included), the countless, pointless dragged-out scenes that lead nowhere, how nearly every new character posing as helpers turned out to be pointless villains, etc.

It was frustrating to see so much hype for the new season fall short on so many levels. Season 2 had so much potential and in the end, it was passable but didn't provide any excitement or even real insight into the story as a whole.

We have so many open-ended plot points that should have wrapped up by the end of the season. We have no starting point for why Daryl and Carol wind up in Spain for season 3. There is a difference between having your hand held throughout the entire season and completely abandoning several ongoing plots and story arcs. Now season 3 has double the work to do.

With the core TWD: Daryl Dixon story over, how much longer will this get dragged out before Daryl and Carol return home? We're hoping TWD: Dead City season 2 doesn't make the same mistakes when it airs next year.

What did you think of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2? You can stream The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon on AMC.