WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Walking Dead Season 11, Episode 4, “Rendition,” which aired Sunday on AMC.
Daryl has been around since the very beginning of The Walking Dead, but he’s never really had his own love interest – until Leah Shaw. She was introduced in the Season 10C episode “Find Me,” but only lasted a single episode before she disappeared. Now, she is back in “Rendition,” but she’s not the same person that Daryl thought she was.
As the episode opens, Maggie’s group of food hunters is separated after being ambushed by the mysterious Reapers. Like everyone else, Daryl is running and fighting for his life, but eventually, he gets away and starts looking for Dog. However, come morning, he is once again confronted by one of the Reapers. When his adversary takes off his mask, Daryl is shocked to see a familiar face -- none other than Leah.
Daryl immediately knows that Leah means business because she demands answers about his group and trains a double-barreled shotgun on him, and even more Reapers appear when he tries to dodge her questions and make an escape. Confronted with those odds, Daryl is forced to surrender. They tie him up, put a sack over his head and take him to their base. There, he lies about knowing the people he was with even after being waterboarded, but no one is fully buying his story.
Leah, though, keeps finding ways to keep him alive. It's shown that she also kept a fellow Reaper from killing him the night before, and at this point, she stops the waterboarding. Shortly after that, Leah gets a bit of cursory information from Daryl about the people he was with, and using that as leverage, she decides to trust him and recommend that he be allowed to join the Reapers. Since Leah is trusted by Pope, the Reapers’ leader, Daryl is given a trial by fire to prove his worth. After he passes the test, he is admitted into the Reapers and given the full scoop on the group’s religious fanaticism.
Daryl and Leah clearly still care for each other to some extent. Leah must still have a thing for him – even if it’s no longer romantic – because she kept sticking her nose out for him. Likewise, Daryl might actually have stayed with Leah if she hadn’t disappeared back in Season 10C. However, their interactions going forward are nothing but a question mark. Leah calls the murderous Reapers her “family,” and despite Daryl’s poker face, he is clearly baffled that she could identify with this kind of group.
Neither character exists in the comics, so their fates aren’t easily predicted, but given that the Carol and Daryl spin-off is in the works, it should be a given that Daryl survives all of this. The question going forward is whether he will convince Leah to join him in taking down the Reapers or if he will use her to tear them down from the inside out in order to save his Alexandria family.
To see what happens between Daryl and Leah, tune into Season 11 of The Walking Dead. The series airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and is available to stream early on AMC+.