Straight.
He’s straight, so said Robert Kirkman in last night’s episode of The Talking Dead, which we’ll get back to after I vent with a GIF.
To recap, there’s been speculation about the sexual orientation of The Walking Dead‘s Daryl Dixon since creator Robert Kirkman responded to a letter in the back of issue #130, answering a question about whether the character is gay with “it’s been discussed”. The character doesn’t appear in the comics and was created for the TV show by writers Frank Darabont, Charles H. Eglee, and Jack LoGiudice, which puts him in the unique position of not having his backstory available in the source material, fueling speculation.
After Kirkman kicked off that speculation, he only added to it in a followup interview. Then showrunner Scott Gimple said there will be a new gay character on the show soon, though not necessarily Daryl. And, whatever the writers decide, Norman Reedus is cool with it.
Well, now we have our answer, courtesy of Robert Kirkman, who got my hopes up over nothing in the first place.
“Daryl Dixon is being somewhat asexual on the show, he’s a very introverted character and I think that’s somewhat his appeal. […] In The Walking Dead letters column in the old comic book that I do, there was a question that made me mention that there was a possibility early on about making Daryl Dixon’s character gay and it caused quite a hubbub online. I just wanted to make it clear that the possibility is there and I would’ve been fine with it, the network would have been fine with it, but we ultimately didn’t do that. I can make it official, Daryl Dixon is actually straight, but coming back in the next half of the season we’re going to be introducing a very prominent gay character from the comics that’ll be debuting.” [transcribed by Vixen Varsity]
So while AMC was spoiling last night’s episode on Facebook, Kirkman was spoiling my fanfiction (most of which involved puns on “Dixon / dicks on” because I’m classy). At least the “Carol And Daryl Show” is still a possibility.
As for which prominent gay character from the comics we’ll be seeing, our money is on Aaron, the recruiter for the Alexandria safe zone. I’d link to a Wiki about him, but they’re all filled with huge spoilers, and we’ll leave the spoiling to AMC’s Walking Dead Facebook page.
Via Vixen Varsity / CBM
