Norman Reedus Hints at Melissa McBride’s Walking Dead Return

Carol and Daryl will (probably) ride again.

After Melissa McBride dropped out of a planned Walking Dead spinoff starring her character Carol and Norman Reedus‘ Daryl in April, citing the production’s move overseas, fans of the zombie horror franchise were left disappointed.

However, Reedus, who is still reprising his character in the spinoff, says there’s still plenty of reason for optimism that McBride will appear—even if it is further down the road than fans hoped.

“You don’t know she’s not going to show up on the spinoff,” he told Variety Sept. 23. “I’ll just leave it at that. She’s a very big part of Daryl’s story. It’s all gonna be OK.”

Well that’s quite a shift! But Reedus gave a pretty straightforward explanation.

“The spinoff was announced before we even announced The Walking Dead was ending,” he said. “We always thought we were doing a show that would come back to the flagship show—we’d take off, then come back to the flagship show.”

Reedus further detailed that once it was announced that The Walking Dead would end after season 11, they “shot for a year and a half straight, through the beginning of COVID” and McBride simply needed some time off.