Fans of The Walking Dead have been on one hell of a ride for the last several months. In Season 4, they watched as the gruff and otherwise unattached Daryl (Norman Reedus) grew closer to Beth (Emily Kinney). Nearly everyone was hoping for a romance to bloom. Like all good things on The Walking Dead, though, producers had other plans and at the end of Season 4, it looked as though Beth was being ripped away from Daryl, the show and our hearts.
You’ve seen that explosive new trailer, right? >>
But, then again, maybe not. During Comic-Con, AMC released a brand-new trailer for Season 5 that blew off the faces of everyone who saw it. It was, perhaps, the most in-depth season-long trailer we’d seen. And, yes, we saw Beth. Are the writers finally going to give us what we want?
“You know, I wonder how much the writers pay attention to that and the producers pay attention to that,” Reedus said. “I, of course, get inundated with that on an insane level. But, I wonder how much the behind-the-scenes brains pay attention.”
“I don’t think it really does,” said director and executive producer Greg Nicotera. “When they pitched Season 4, they were talking about when the prison goes down and having Daryl and Beth be bunkered together. And it’s interesting because I get to see all the cuts and I see all the edits from the director’s cuts onward. And I loved the scene in the kitchen when they’re talking, and I got the sense that Daryl was starting to kind of fall in love with Beth a little.”
Our thoughts on Deth/Baryl >>
When Reedus got the script, did he think anything would happen with Daryl and Beth? Does he want them to hook up and get it over with, or does he want something deeper for his character?
“This is how I took it, doing it. I took it like, if Daryl had feelings for Beth, he didn’t understand them,” explained Reedus. “So he was like a child, like, ‘I don’t understand what this means.’ But, it was more intimate than a coupling.”
Nicotera agreed with that sentiment and seemed to think Reedus nailed it perfectly in that scene.
“That’s what made it effective,” complimented Nicotera. “When you’re standing there listening to her play piano, you’re just standing there watching her. And you feel like he’s thinking, ‘This may be the last living person I ever see.’ So, I thought that was a really great connection. A lot of it wasn’t in the script. The script wasn’t like, ‘Beth and Daryl totally hook up.’ It wasn’t there. But when I watched the episode, I felt I kind of wanted that, which was what he brings to it and what Emily brought to it.”
Of course, nothing lasts forever in the world of The Walking Dead, and soon we all thought Beth was gone forever. Now that Beth is actually still alive, what does Reedus want for his character?
“I’m hoping for a threesome in this season,” Reedus teased. “Me and Beth and Carol. The trifecta.”
That could be interesting — though we could think of some other steamy combinations, too. What do you want for The Walking Dead Season 5? Tell us below!
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