Step aside, Nick Fury: Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride are ready to assemble their own Avengers-style team of expert zombie hunters.
The stars of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon stopped by Entertainment Weekly‘s Comic-Con video studio Saturday to discuss the forthcoming third season of the apocalyptic spinoff series. The duo drew on their considerable experience in the expanded Walking Dead universe when asked by EW Editor-in-Chief Patrick Gomez which characters from the franchise’s present and past they would enlist for an ultimate all-star team.
“Can they be dead?” Reedus asks, with a wry smile and ideas percolating behind his eyes.
Gene Page/AMC
Melissa Suzanne McBride, Lauren Cohan, Emily Kinney, Sarah Wayne Callies, and Scott Wilson on ‘The Walking Dead’
“I would have Hershel be the brains behind it, he’s way up here, telling us what to do,” Reedus offers as his first pick. Scott Wilson played the wise farmer and former veterinarian Hershel Greene from seasons 2-4 of the flagship series, and reprised his role in a season 5 flashback. Hershel was a beacon of reason and clearheaded judgement, tempering some of the more erratic tempers of the group led by Andrew Lincoln’s Rick Grimes.
The intrepid Rick is Reedus’ second pick, and Reedus is tapping perhaps the most beloved TWD character for his third: “I’d bring back Michonne.” Danai Gurari joined the core cast of the original series as the silent but deadly Michonne in season 3, and while she and Rick both survived the full odyssey of the series’ 11-season run, Hershel sadly didn’t make it.
For his final pick, Reedus tentatively asks, “Can I say Rooker? Rooker is the wild card. He’s the tornado of the group.” Veteran character actor Michael Rooker played Merle Dixon, the brother of Reedus’ Daryl, across the first three seasons of TWD. A violent and unpredictable bigot, Merle both perpetrates some of the early seasons’ biggest betrayals and submits himself to its biggest (ill-fated) redemption arc. Like Hershel, Merle would have to be reanimated (and perhaps dezombified?) to join Reedus and McBride’s Walking Dead Avengers.
McBride cosigns the idea of enlisting Merle, calling the character “the one who can go in first to clear the path. Like, ‘You go first, clear the path, and then come back — and if you don’t come back, we don’t go.”
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Since the 2010 premiere of The Walking Dead, the survival horror series adapted by Frank Darabont from the comic series by writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore has spawned six spinoffs, with new episodes now only coming from two: The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon and The Walking Dead: Dead City.
Last year, Walking Dead franchise executive producer Scott M. Gimple, who joined Reedus and McBride in EW’s Comic-Con studio this year along with Daryl Dixon executive producer David Zabel, told EW it was his “fervent hope” to be able to reunite characters from across the extended franchise.
“We don’t have the imminent plan right now,” he explained, but insisted that a “foundation has been laid and I really would like to, but it depends on so many factors coming together. So I really hope to, and in my mind I’m planning for it, but along the way you can’t count on anything.”
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon will officially come to an end after its fourth season, leaving Dead City as the last standing spinoff. If Gimple has his eyes on a seventh entry in this twisted saga, perhaps it could finally feature the team-up of fans’ dreams.
Check out more of EW’s coverage from San Diego Comic-Con 2025.
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