Greg Nicotero Explains How Daryl Dixon Uses Zombies Differently From Other Walking Dead Spinoffs

Over its first two seasons, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon has featured variant walkers like the flesh-searing burners, climbers, the faster and stronger ampers, and bioluminescent zombies lurking in the Chunnel linking France and the United Kingdom. But in Daryl Dixon season 3, Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol’s (Melissa McBride) detour to Spain will bring them face-to-face with… talking walkers?! Well, not quite. Like The Walking Dead before it — which seemingly introduced speaking zombies back in season 9, only to then reveal they were the flesh-wearing Whisperers — the talking dead aren’t quite what they seem.

When a shipwrecked Daryl and Carol make their way to Solaz del Mar, they’ll meet “a bunch of new groups of people,” teases series executive producer Greg Nicotero in an interview with ComicBook. One of those groups seems to be a Spanish version of the Whisperers, who so convincingly blended in with the dead they could be mistaken for walkers — often with fatal results.

“Daryl comes in contact with a leper colony at one point. What’s fun about it is when you initially see them, they’re all covered up and they’re hunched and walking slowly. You’re like, ‘Are those walkers?’ And then one of them talks,” Nicotero reveals. “You’re like, ‘Holy sh-t! Zombies can talk?’” With the lepers, Nicotero adds, “We got a chance to do some really unique non-zombie characters for a change.”

One advantage that Daryl Dixon has over the America-set spinoffs like The Walking Dead: Dead City and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is the international setting, which has, so far, spanned different cultures reacting to the walker apocalypse across France, Greenland, England, and Spain.

“One thing that Daryl does that the other shows don’t do is they approach the zombies in a very different way,” Nicotero said, citing a first season episode where Daryl encounters a Parisian conductor whose orchestra consists of walkers attached to instruments. Using the walkers to reflect other cultures was “really fun” and a unique opportunity to do what other Walking Dead spinoffs cannot.

“In this season we have a bit where zombies are being used as marionettes that are portraying sort of old world Spanish culture,” Nicotero, who has served as the special effects makeup designer for all things Walking Dead since 2010, continued. “They’re still scary in many elements, because zombies always have to be scary. But we also have an opportunity to see how other cultures relate to them.”

In the third season, Daryl and Carol “continue their journey towards home and the ones they love,” according to the logline. “As they struggle to find their way back, the path takes them farther astray, leading them through distant lands with ever-changing and unfamiliar conditions as they witness the various effects of the Walker apocalypse.”

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 3 premieres Sunday, Sept. 7, on AMC and AMC+.