The Confusing New Zombie Variant Timeline in 'The Walking Dead' Universe

By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 10, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 10, 2023 |

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon aired the fifth of six episodes in its first season this week, and in the episode, reintroduced a new zombie variant into The Walking Dead universe. For those who didn’t watch The Walking Dead: The World Beyond (and why would you?), this variant was initially introduced in the post-credits scene of the series finale back in in 2021, nevermind that the post-credits scene had little to nothing to do with The World Beyond itself.

The post-credit-sequence occurs in France, where Daryl Dixon is also set. In it, a scientist is reviewing a video message sent by Dr. Edwin Jenner, who TWD fans will remember as the last surviving employee of the Atlanta CDC (Noah Emmerich plays him). The message included some information that didn’t make much sense at the time, but it does now in light of the most recent Daryl Dixon episode.

Jenner is praising the data he read from French scientists who “used cardiac plaques as a host medium for steroidal therapies” on the zombies “in the hopes of short-circuiting the brain or perhaps regaining function to cause nerve confusion.”

It’s not clear to me exactly what that means — it sounds like a bunch of science gibberish the writers made up — but “steroidal therapies,” “short-circuiting brain,” and “nerve confusion” certainly tracks with the new zombies we see in episode five of Dixon. In the episode, Daryl begins in Maine, where he collects zombies for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. However, we later learn that the collectors are bringing the zombies to France, presumably to continue their experiments (why they needed to collect the living dead from Maine instead of France, where there were plenty of dead-alive bodies to experiment on, can only be described as “convenient”).

For reasons that aren’t important here, Daryl is abducted and taken on the ship headed to France — he’s meant to be literal zombie food. However, he manages to escape on a lifeboat, but not before the man who helped him escape is attacked by this new variant, which is fast, strong, can climb stairs, and literally shreds apart its victims.

In the same episode, Daryl — now in France — is held captive again, but this time, he is put in a staging area in front of a huge audience and left to fight one of the new zombies, which is injected via a dart gun with this steroidal serum that turns the zombie powerfully rabid. (We also saw this experiment on this new variant two weeks ago). The steroidal concoction is clearly part of the experiments that Dr. Jenner previously spoke of. This all tracks.

What doesn’t make sense is that, soon after the steroidal walker was introduced in 2021, a new variant was also introduced on The Walking Dead. This variant could climb and open doors, but it did not have the superpowers possessed by the French variant. This new variant was introduced in one episode but largely ignored for most of the final season. The belief at the time was that the new variant in America was related to the French variant. Still, we see now that the French variant was a result of scientific experimentation and not viral mutation.

The confusion is compounded again in that original post-credit scene that takes place in France. After the scientist reviews the video from Dr. Jenner, a stranger walks into the room and blames the scientist for the new, more dangerous variant in France. We now know from Daryl Dixon that it’s less a variant and more the product of a serum injected into the zombies.

However, in the post-credits scene, the scientist is shot and killed by the stranger and immediately turns into a new, super-zombie. However, the person was not injected with a serum, which suggested that the new zombie variant was viral. That is at odds with what we now know, which is that the super zombies are the result of an injection.

Did The Walking Dead/Daryl Dixon writers clearly make it up as they went along? Yes. Am I being pedantic about the origins of the super zombies? Also yes. Does this ultimately matter? Not really. Is it still annoying? Yes.

The Daryl Dixon season finale airs on Sunday.