Daryl Dixon Season 3 opens with shipwreck in Spain after storm

The Walking Dead spinoff Daryl Dixon opened its third season with a stormy turn that strands its protagonists in a new country and escalates both the on‑screen peril and behind‑the‑scenes challenges for its cast. In the season premiere, titled Costa da Morte and broadcast in the United States on AMC, Norman Reedus’s Daryl Dixon and Melissa McBride’s Carol attempt to sail from England to America only to be shipwrecked on the coast of Spain after a catastrophic storm that also claims the life of Stephen Merchant’s Julian, who becomes a walker.

The episode answers how Daryl and Carol would traverse Europe to reach a transatlantic vessel, showing them persuading the lonely Julian, who survived alone in London, to take them across the sea. Their plan is undone by a violent tempest that rips the boat apart and leaves the trio washed ashore in Spain. Showrunner David Zabel laughed about Daryl’s misfortune, saying the character is a woodsman at heart and that the sea has not been kind to him.

Production accounts revealed the storm sequence was physically demanding. Reedus said the sequence was filmed in a massive pool where effects teams used bulldozers to create waves and multiple...