After a successful 16-year run as Daryl Dixon, Norman Reedus has bid farewell to his beloved Walking Dead character.
Reedus, 57, first starred as Dixon, one of the few survivors of a deadly outbreak, across the entire 11 seasons of AMC’s hit zombie apocalypse series, which ran from 2010 to 2022. He later reprised the role in the spin-off, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, which wrapped production on its fourth and final season earlier this month.
Scheduled to premiere this fall, the eight-episode final season will bring Dixon’s journey to a close after he found himself washed ashore in a post-apocalyptic France.
In a new Instagram post shared Wednesday, Reedus reflected on his time working on the popular franchise.
Alongside a carousel of pictures from set, the actor wrote: “Finally going through these photos to check off from the last episode now that I’m back from Mongolia it was really hard to kill any of them.
“I didn’t post any of those here, but I can’t wait for people to see this show. The crew [is the] best I’ve ever worked with, the feeling of accomplishment when it was over was just amazing,” he added.
“Such hard work and so much heart put into this I think you’re gonna feel it. It was a special season. I can’t wait for you to see it. It hits just way different this time.”
In the finale of the flagship series, Dixon is last seen setting out in search of his friends Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira), who disappeared in seasons nine and 10, respectively.
The Daryl Dixon spin-off premiered in 2023 and picks up months after the final events on The Walking Dead.
In the sequel series, flashbacks show Dixon being captured and forced onto a French cargo ship in Maine by a paramilitary group. During his transatlantic voyage, he manages to escape on a lifeboat and eventually washes ashore on the southern coast of France.
After waking with amnesia, Dixon embarks on a journey across France to uncover how he got there while fighting to find his way back home.
Daryl Dixon is the sixth Walking Dead spin-off. During the original series’ run, AMC launched Fear the Walking Dead, which aired from 2015 to 2023. It was followed by the two-season limited series The Walking Dead: World Beyond, which ran from 2020 to 2021. In 2022, AMC released the single-season anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead, which featured standalone stories about new and existing characters.
Then, in 2023, came both Daryl Dixon and The Walking Dead: Dead City, which also concludes this fall. The franchise expanded again in 2024 with the miniseries The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.