The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 2 Scene Fans Couldn't Help But Love
"The Walking Dead" Season 11, Episode 2 – Acheron: Part II — contained an awesome action moment fans are raving about online.
The scene in question, perhaps not surprisingly, involves Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus), the AMC zombie drama's unflappable tough guy — who's never been in a situation he couldn't survive. The moment was shot differently than scenes of its type usually are on "The Walking Dead," and it seems like the audience response has been extremely favorable. In fact, the style of this sequence reminded people of memorable stuff from some great movies of the past, and even a classic video game franchise.
In "Acheron: Part II," Daryl is separated from the rest of the salvage team in the subway tunnels because he went chasing after his dog, and he spends most of the episode trying to get back to them. Eventually, he makes it to the next car down the train from where walkers drawn by Gage (Lucas Pace) have broken through the door between cars and are attacking Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and the rest of the group. Daryl sees that he can help save his friends by getting them out through his car. The problem is that the car is full of walkers. So he very quietly gets out a handgun and a flashlight as he comes up on them.
As Daryl starts shooting, the camera cuts to the outside of the train and scrolls sideways along the car as he shoots his way through. And it's this very cool shot that "The Walking Dead" fans can't stop talking about on social media.
Daryl has John Wick vibes
On the subreddit for "The Walking Dead," fans were comparing Daryl's subway shootout to a number of popular action flicks, as well as citing scenes from the "Resident Evil" survival horror video games (which, as zombie fans will tell you, are quite different from the movies they inspired).
Reddit user XXXTurkey wrote that the subway scene had "Oldboy vibes," and tosserod concurred, sharing the famous fight scene from Park Chan-wook's classic revenge thriller where Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) beats up a hallway of henchmen in a single side-scrolling take. Other fans compared Daryl's calm precision with his gun and the stylized way the scene was shot to a certain beloved Keanu Reeves film franchise. "That awesome shootout scene with Daryl gave full on 'John Wick' vibes. Gripping cinematopgraphy," wrote raavan_bond. Fun fact: the director of photography for "The Walking Dead" is Duane Charles Manwiller, who also worked as the second unit director of photography on the first two "John Wick" movies, which means he filmed the action scenes. So the "John Wick vibes" aren't a coincidence — they're quite real.
And finally, when it came to "Resident Evil" comparisons, many fans were reminded of scenes from the franchise that involved Leon S. Kennedy, the protagonist of several "Resident Evil" games and the recent animated series "Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness." As mertiful wrote, "I got resident evil vibes from how he handled the flashlight lol." Note that Leon S. Kennedy is known for taking out undead creatures with a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other.
Kudos to Duane Charles Manwiller, episode director Kevin Dowling, Norman Reedus, and all the people dressed up as zombies who got shot for the awesome scene.
New episodes of "The Walking Dead" air Sundays on AMC.