Daryl Dixon is a fictional character from AMC's horror drama series The Walking Dead, and the protagonist of its last three seasons, replacing Rick Grimes.

Despite his bad temper and volatility, he is tolerated by the core group of survivors due to his skills in hunting animals and fearless efficiency in killing walkers.

In September 2020, it was announced that Reedus and Melissa McBride (Carol) would lead their own spin-off series set for a 2023 premiere, following the conclusion of The Walking Dead's eleventh and final season.

During the first season and for much of the second, Daryl rides his brother Merle's Triumph Bonneville chopper with the Nazi German ᛋᛋ (Schutzstaffel) insignia prominently displayed on the fuel tank.

During one solo outing, he is knocked from a horse and suffers hallucinations of Merle, complaining that he is spending time searching for Sophia and not for him, before returning to the group.

Carol takes initiative to kill two who have shown signs of the flu in secret, and when Rick discovers this, evicts her from the group, upsetting Daryl.

A few days later, the two are briefly separated while fleeing walkers, and Daryl sees Beth kidnapped by men in a car with a white cross on it.

Rick's group escapes Terminus after discovering they engage in cannibalism with the help of Carol, who had launched a walker horde on the site.

Like Rick, Daryl remains skeptical given the lack of survival experience the residents have, but accepts Aaron's offer to assist them in finding more recruits.

After walking into a Wolves trap, they are rescued by Morgan Jones, Rick's friend before he met the rest of the group in Atlanta, and they bring him back to Alexandria.

He is brought to a clearing along with Rick and several others of the group that has been captured by the Saviors, and they meet the real Negan, who wields a baseball bat wrapped with barbed wired named "Lucille".

Daryl is first seen in the season premiere, "Mercy", where he is key to their plan to attack the Sanctuary by luring a massive walker herd using placed explosives and his motorcycle.

However, when the second siren, manned by Justin, fails to sound, Rick realizes the group of men at a logging site nearby are in trouble.

Rick sees a loose horse nearby and offers to lead the walker horde away from the camp while Daryl drives off to warn them.

Daryl joins the others in mourning Rick, unaware that he was saved at the last minute by Jadis, the leader of the Scavengers group, who took him to parts unknown.

Alpha infiltrates the Kingdom and shows Daryl a massive horde of walkers that she threatens to unleash upon the communities if they cross into Whisperer territory again.

Beta rallies a huge herd of walkers to attack the community's new headquarters, an abandoned hospital, but Daryl sneaks through the horde and leads it away using a wagon and loud music.

Carol tells Daryl to let Leah go, angering him; they get into an argument in which he blames her for the apparent death of Connie, one of their community members (he is unaware that she is still alive).

Working as a soldier in the Commonwealth Army, Daryl maintains his loyalty to his friends and family, even threatening Lance Hornsby at gunpoint when he steps out of line.

During this period, while Daryl wears his armor often, he also discards it in situations where he's around his friends, such as the standoff at Hilltop and working with Gabriel and Aaron despite them being with a number of other Commonwealth soldiers.

After things go sideways at the Commonwealth, Daryl and Carol manage to escape together and break Lance out of prison to help them find where their missing friends have gone.

Following his departure from the Commonwealth, Daryl is captured under unknown circumstances by an enemy group and placed aboard a ship belonging to Pouvoir which is collecting live test subjects from around the world for their experimentation on walkers.

In the Gulf of Cadiz, according to the ship's captain, Daryl manages to escape, instigate a mutiny and he flees overboard, but is stopped on the shore of France near Marseille.

Found by a nun named Isabelle, Daryl is taken to an abbey where his wounds are treated and Isabelle attempts to enlist Daryl's help to transport a young boy named Laurent to a community called the Nest up north as the nuns and the religious movement that they are a part of, the Union of Hope, believes that Laurent is destined to become the next Messiah who will lead humanity to a revival.

Daryl refuses and leaves, but he comes back to help when Stephane Codron, Michel's vengeful older brother, launches an attack on the abbey, killing most of the nuns.

Needing a horse, Daryl helps the children defeat a hostile American survivor named RJ Gaines who has been plaguing them, in the process rescuing one kid who was kidnapped and putting down another who had become a walker.

Two weeks later, Daryl trains Laurent in fighting the undead and clashes with Losang about his more violent ways compared to the Union of Hope's pacifism.

He continued by saying: "In the Walking Dead letters column in the old comic book that I do, there was a question that made me mention that there was a possibility early on about making Daryl Dixon's character gay and it caused quite a hubbub online.

[13] Additionally, Daryl won IGN's "Best TV Hero" of 2012,[14] and the character was featured in a Super Bowl XLVII commercial for Time Warner Cable.

First introduced as an angry redneck and evolving into one of the series' most striking figures, Daryl has revealed more dimensions over time, and Norman Reedus' performance helping to expose an unsurpassed kindness and commitment to the hero's closest companions.