Daryl and Rick Have a ‘True Brotherhood’ in Season Five, Lincoln and Reedus Say
Right off the bat in this TV Guide interview, Norman Reedus spoils the whole Terminus mystery.
“It’s a nightclub!” he says, a place to boogie-woogie-woogie your butt off when the apocalypse gets you down.
Or not. It’s just a joke to cover one of the many, many details about the new season starting Oct. 12 Reedus and Andrew Lincoln aren’t going to reveal. When TV Guide sneakily asks about “Death Dinners” the cast holds for departing cast members, they joke they’ve had at least six so far this season.
But they do feel free to talk about brotherly love between Rick and Daryl.
“If it weren’t for the apocalypse, they would probably be enemies. It’s rad. I love their relationship. I think it’s a true brotherhood. If you stand beside Rick and Daryl, then you’re family; it’s that simple, that black-and-white. But if you’re not there, I’m sorry, you’re in trouble,” Lincoln said.
He’s quick to add a reminder, however, that the last person Rick called “brother” was Shane, so it’s no guarantee things will go well.
Reedus also tries to explain Daryl’s relationship with Beth.
“At the end of a dark tunnel, she was the flicker of light when Daryl didn’t think there was any light at that time anywhere. She gave him a little hope that there’s something good left. But I think if he had any sort of romantic notions toward Beth, he didn’t know what it meant. Just to have the little butterfly feeling for a second is something. It might have been like one tiny moth, but it was a flutter, and that was good enough for him,” Reedus said.
Of course that tiny moth was stomped on when Beth was kidnapped by parties unknown, so that puts Daryl in a dark place at the start of season five.
“He’s always getting little hints that it might be OK, and then they get taken away from him. The fire that’s burning inside him is slowly going out. He’s becoming more hardened and darker, which also makes him more fiercely loyal. You can only beat a dog so much with a stick before he bites you, and he keeps getting beaten with the stick, so I think he might snap,” Reedus said.
For his part, Lincoln says the old morally conflicted Rick is gone, replaced with a sort of ultimate survivor.
“He’s incredibly uncompromising, and he’s a dangerous man. Not in a vindictive, malicious way, but in a pragmatic way. Are you a problem? Then you must die,” Lincoln said.
Read the full interview here.