Daryl Dixon’s creators want the Walking Dead spinoff to return to the show’s glory years

polygon.com:

Considering how much the cast would later expand, growing to include various factions and hierarchies of leadership, returning to the first few seasons ofThe Walking Dead can feel a bit refreshing. The premiere episode especially, which saw series figurehead Rick Grimes trying to survive in a zombified hellscape, is a remarkably stripped-down approach in comparison to what would come later. It’s a feeling Greg Nicotero, special makeup effects expert and co-founder of KNB EFX Group, would try to recapture when working on the latest spinoff, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, which premieres Sept. 10 on AMC.

Nicotero plays a lot of roles on Daryl Dixon — he directs a few episodes, is an executive producer, and still maintains his guiding hand in the franchise’s gory look. He’s been a part of The Walking Dead for almost 15 years now, having been around since its debut, back when it was overseen by then-showrunner Frank Darabont. He’d been brought on because they needed his expertise, and no one knew how to put together a zombie horde with ghoulish practical effects quite like Nicotero — his main introduction to the business had been working with makeup guru Tom Savini on George Romero’sDay of the Dead.

It was this beginning Nicotero wanted to return to, at least in spirit. “It was really like starting all over again and doing what Frank Darabont and I did in season 1,” Nicotero said of this new Daryl Dixon-led project. Here, we find Daryl, the rough-edged co-lead and series mascot (“The Robin to Andrew Lincoln’s Batman,” as Nicotero puts it), stranded in France and desperate to get back home to the U.S. But despite it being a spinoff of a series that lasted for 11 seasons, remarkably little research needs to be done to get up