‘The Walking Dead’ season 6 premiere reaction: Andrew Lincoln on Rick – Daryl ‘tension’

“The Walking Dead” is full of characters who have strong opinions one way or another on how to do things, and there is no one who is more the epitome of that than Rick Grimes. Here’s someone who is clashing with Morgan and with citizens of Alexandria when it comes to the best way to handle outside invaders, and you wouldn’t think that he would have time in the day or reason to clash with someone like Daryl.

Yet, there is. Specifically, it seems like one of the reasons for the tension between the two is tied to recruiting, and they’re not even communicating that well on the subject. Speaking about the episode to Entertainment Weekly, Andrew Lincoln made it clear that he and Norman Reedus both chose to handle the revelations on this subject in a particularly dramatic way:

“…We played it like a betrayal. I found out from Morgan what had gone down. He didn’t directly tell me that, so that wasn’t scripted, that was something me and Norman just riffed about. I was like, “Why don’t we do it like a betrayal? A brotherly betrayal.” Because otherwise it’s just exposition, like this, this, this. It set the scene for something much more complicated and brilliant. I do think that’s an argument that’s going to continue as well. Like a lot of Scott’s first episodes, but particularly this one, he’s spinning themes and ideas and story arcs that play out along the greater 16 hours this season. Certainly that is an argument with a lot of push and pull between these guys that will continue to cause friction.”

It feels fairly safe to assume that everyone wants to see Rick and Daryl on the same page, and the good news for their relationship is that with all of the danger coming to Alexandria, they may not have time to argue. Instead, they may simply have to focus more on reacting.

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