The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon showrunner breaks down that London-based twist in season 3, episode 1: “We had this idea of the only living human in England, and we wanted to tell that story”

London collapses! A decade and a half into The Walking Dead saga and we’re finally shown how Britain handled the Wildfire Virus—spoiler: the apocalypse hasn’t been kind to the nation that adores its cuppa…

Although earlier chatter in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon hinted that England might have escaped the plague relatively unscathed, the season 3 opener yanked that comfort blanket away. The first episode kicks off with Carol (Melissa McBride) and Daryl (Norman Reedus) trekking inland from Folkestone on the Kent shoreline toward a ravaged, walker-choked London—an apocalypse postcard inspired by showrunner David Zabel’s deep affection for the capital.

“I’m so fond of London that destroying it felt thrilling; watching it in total decay seemed exciting,” he tells GamesRadar+. “It’s pure love, not spite, that made us raze it. We also dreamed up a lonely survivor—the sole breathing soul left on the island—and needed ruins to frame his tale. Then we struck gold casting Stephen Merchant. I pray no Brit feels insulted. [Director] Daniel [Percival] handled the actual demolition; we merely scripted it…”

“Honestly, it felt perfect, since we’d teased viewers that the UK was limping along better,” Percival notes. “We still don’t know what’s beyond London, but the city carries its own doom-laden legend; history keeps knocking it down and it always bounces back. Don’t fret—it’ll resurrect someday. What grabs me is picturing ten million souls erased; that scale of annihilation is unthinkable, and the series occasionally needs that gut-punch, showing how a handful of bad choices can topple everything and turn survivors into prey again. Our grip on life is frighteningly fragile.”

Inside the ruins, Carol and Daryl bump into Julian Chamberlain (Stephen Merchant), who bills himself as “the final Englishman standing.” Over supper he confesses he hasn’t laid eyes on another human in, well, ages.

“We plugged the Channel Tunnel to wall ourselves off from the continent,” he recounts—a wink toward Brexit if ever there was one. “For a spell things stayed under control, until they spiralled.” Walkers multiplied, and the living shattered into warring clans: “Folks tried to run, but first nobody could enter, then nobody could leave.”

“Stephen blew us away,” Reedus enthuses. “Everyone expected pure comedy, yet his dramatic beats were magnetic. Comics carry this strange shadow; when he turned grave you couldn’t tell if he’d break down or lash out. He nailed every second.”