Merle Dixon
Merle Dixon | |
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The Walking Dead character | |
First appearance | "Guts" (2010) |
Last appearance | "This Sorrowful Life" (2013) |
Created by | Frank Darabont |
Portrayed by | Michael Rooker |
Voiced by | Michael Rooker (Survival Instinct) |
In-universe information | |
Occupation |
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Family |
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Merle Dixon is a
The character's introduction garnered negative reviews from professional critics, but fan response was positive. When the character reappears in the
Appearances
Merle is the older brother of Daryl Dixon. Having no mother and a neglectful and abusive father, Merle raised Daryl when not incarcerated in juvenile detention. Though the length of time and military occupational specialty are not stated, Merle served in the United States Army, where at some point he mouthed off to a non-commissioned officer and subsequently punched five of his teeth out. According to Shane and Daryl, Merle was a drug dealer before the outbreak. He is also shown to have been a drug user (e.g., in "Guts" and "This Sorrowful Life").
Season 1
Merle first appears in the episode "
In the next episode "Tell It to the Frogs", as walkers begin to invade the building and reach the chained rooftop door, Merle struggles until he notices a hacksaw by the spilled toolbox the others had left behind. He uses his belt to reach the hacksaw and ultimately cuts off his own hand to escape, as the hacksaw blade was too dull to cut through the handcuffs. Rick and the group return to the camp and explain to Daryl that they abandoned Merle. Daryl, T-Dog, Rick and Glenn (Steven Yeun) decide to return to Atlanta to retrieve him as well as a bag of weapons Rick dropped downtown. Returning to the department store roof, the four see that Merle has severed his own hand with a dull hacksaw. In the next episode "Vatos", the four find evidence that Merle survived the self-mutilation by cauterizing the wound. They follow Merle's blood-trail through the department store but are unable to find him. Back outside, they discover their truck has been taken. Rick feels that the truck might have been stolen by Merle during his escape.
Season 2
Merle remains missing throughout the second season. He only appears in the episode "Chupacabra", wherein Merle taunts and mocks Daryl in a hallucination for giving up on searching for him and reminds Daryl that he is in a group that had left Merle for dead on the rooftop. Merle also berates Daryl for a perceived weakness that Merle blames on the time Daryl has spent with the group.
Season 3
In the episode "Walk with Me", Merle is found to be living in Woodbury, where he has earned the status of the Governor's right-hand man. He has fashioned a knife attachment onto the stump where his hand used to be. He has been hoping to find his brother, Daryl, since his own separation from the group. While investigating an incident involving a crashed helicopter, Merle and a group of survivors from Woodbury encounter Michonne and fellow Atlanta survivor Andrea, and bring them back to Woodbury, along with the sole survivor of the helicopter crash. In the episode "Killer Within", Andrea gives Merle directions to the last location where she had seen Daryl.
Merle is noticeably kept in line by the Governor, a sharp contrast to his nature in the Atlanta group. In the episode "Hounded", Merle allows Michonne to leave Woodbury at the Governor's orders, but in the next episode, "Say the Word", the Governor sends Merle to lead a posse to hunt down Michonne. He wounds her and she kills members of the posse, but when Michonne escapes into the red zone, Merle calls off the hunt, reporting to the Governor that he killed her. Later on, Merle runs into Glenn and Maggie from the Atlanta group. He asks them to take him to Daryl. They refuse, so he holds Maggie hostage and demands Glenn drive them to Woodbury. In the episode "When the Dead Come Knocking", Merle unsuccessfully tortures Glenn to obtain the location of the group, including beating Glenn and leaving him locked in a room with a walker and tied to a chair. In the episode "Made to Suffer", Rick's group infiltrates Woodbury and rescues Glenn and Maggie, Michonne attacks the Governor; furious at losing an eye and his reanimated daughter to a woman Merle reported as dead, he publicly accuses Merle of treason and reveals that he has captured Daryl. In the episode "The Suicide King", the Governor orders Merle and Daryl to fight to the death, but they are saved by Rick and Maggie, who attack Woodbury. When Merle begins to insult the group, Rick knocks him out. Rick's group decides not to include Merle because of his attitude and his transgressions against Maggie and Glenn, but Daryl opts to leave the group to join Merle, refusing to leave his brother behind again.
Merle and Daryl spend time fending for themselves in the woods. In the episode "Home", they come across a family being attacked by walkers and Merle half-heartedly assists in Daryl's efforts to rescue them. Merle then attempts to rob them, but Daryl points his crossbow at him and lets the family drive off before walking off on his own. Merle follows and they get into a physical confrontation, where the depth of their father's abuse is shown when Merle inadvertently exposes scars on Daryl's back. Merle realizes that his leaving home resulted in Daryl becoming the target of their father's abuse. It is also revealed that the brothers had originally planned to rob the Atlanta group. Daryl then leaves to go back to the prison, despite Merle's claims that the group will never accept him. The brothers arrive at the prison at the tail-end of an assault by the Governor and his men, who have crashed a truck through the prison gate and unleashed a horde of walkers onto the prison grounds. Merle and Daryl save Rick from attacking walkers.
In the episode "I Ain't a Judas", Merle is promptly locked inside a prison cell, where he shares what he knows about Woodbury and the Governor with the group. He bonds with Hershel and apologizes to Michonne, claiming his attack on her was simply following the Governor's orders. Later, Merle, hearing Beth's singing, walks into the cell block where he and Rick share an antagonizing look from across the room. In the episode "Arrow on the Doorpost", Merle unsuccessfully tries to get the prison group to attack the Governor after fighting Glenn. He later tries to get Michonne to join him with his mission.
In the penultimate season three episode "
Development and reception
Actor Michael Rooker described his thoughts on the role: "Merle is a survivor of the Zombie Apocalypse. And you can tell when you first meet him that even before all the shit went down he was kind of an asshole. We don't play a lot of it up in our portrayal but he's the kind of person where you're not really sure if he should be in charge... if he would be a good leader or not, though he certainly thinks he is."[5] Merle was one of a number of characters introduced in the second episode of the series, "Guts".[6] Kirkman was pleased with Rooker's performance, retorting that it was "'The Michael Rooker Show' for one solid episode."[6]
I actually got a chance to hang out with him and he's a totally awesome guy. He always plays bad guys and psychos and it's weird, because he's this really boisterous, friendly guy. But yeah, his character is very important to the life of the show. He's a completely original character that was never in the comic. He's kind of the first human that they come across where it's like, 'Hey, this guy's really dangerous.' Also Michael Rooker likes to ad-lib. He got us over our cursing limit a couple of times. I think it was a bit of a pain in the a—for the post production people.[6]
Eric Goldman of IGN disliked the introduction of Merle, calling him "ridiculous".[7] Leonard Pierce of The A.V. Club commented that "Merle is a huge sore thumb in the middle of the episode: behaving like no one in his situation ever would, his character seems to exist for no other reason than to cause dramatically convenient trouble."[8] In his review of the next episode, "Tell It to the Frogs", Pierce notes that even though "Merle is a racist asshole who might have gotten everyone killed, in a world where the only real distinction is between the living and the dead, leaving him to be torn apart leaves a bit of a bad taste in everyone's mouth."[9]
Rooker confirmed his appearance in the second-season episode "
Rooker initially estimated that he lost 20 pounds preparing for his return in the
Eric Goldman at IGN specifically praised the performance of Michael Rooker in "This Sorrowful Life", the final appearance of Merle.[22] Zack Handlen called the episode's last scene "a good one, and it leads to the terrific final confrontation between Daryl and zombie Merle that makes up for a lot".[23] Handlen commented: "I'm not sure I buy or even understand Merle's change of heart, given how inconsistent the character has been. In his conversations with Michonne, we're being sold the idea that he's deeply conflicted about all the murdering he's done, and that he's had something like a change of heart since joining the prison group. Which doesn't really fit into anything, although at least now Merle's gradual integration with the main ensemble makes a little more sense; he wasn't supposed to be a monster, just a messed up asshole who eventually had enough regrets to try and do the right thing. There's no background for this, and no real depth to Merle apart from Michael Rooker's performance (and Rooker is almost single-handedly responsible for any consistency the character ever had)."[23] He also felt that with Merle letting Michonne go, "it's nice to have a character actually behave better than you were expecting them to for once. And everything else with Merle from then on is great, from the scene with him drinking whiskey and using rock music to attract a herd of walkers, to his ambush of the Woodbury group that was waiting to ambush Rick, to the fight with the Governor. And, of course, the last bit, with Daryl finally finding his brother after it's too late to save him. While the show so often struggles with finding emotion or resonance in its conversations [...] there are still wordless exchanges like this, with Daryl sobbing as he stabs Merle again and again and again. There's no real complexity to what's happening, and no mystery, but it's powerful regardless, inspiring fear and pity for both characters, and ending the hour on a high note."[23]
See also
References
- ^ Kirk 2013.
- ^ Keetley 2014, p. 9.
- ^ Haworth, Drew (29 November 2012). "Terminal Reality's The Walking Dead: Norman Reedus is Daryl Dixon". Playstation.Blog. SCEA, LLC. Retrieved 2 December 2012.
- ISBN 978-1-118-34668-6.
- ^ "Michael Rooker interview (Merle Dixon on "The Walking Dead")". The Desk of Brian. Archived from the original on 2013-11-03.
- ^ Time, Inc. Archived from the originalon July 2, 2014. Retrieved January 14, 2012.
- ^ Goldman, Eric (November 7, 2010). "The Walking Dead: "Guts" Review". IGN. Retrieved February 12, 2013.
- ^ Pierce, Leonard (November 7, 2010). "Guts". The A.V. Club. Retrieved February 12, 2013.
- ^ Pierce, Leonard (November 14, 2010). "Tell It To The Frogs". The A.V. Club. Retrieved February 12, 2013.
- ^ a b Karlin, Susan (November 10, 2011). "'Walking Dead': Michael Rooker on the return of Merle Dixon". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on November 13, 2011. Retrieved January 7, 2012.
- ^ Collis, Clark (November 14, 2011). "'The Walking Dead': Writer Robert Kirkman talks about tonight's episode, 'Chupacabra'". Entertainment Weekly. Time Inc. Archived from the original on November 16, 2011. Retrieved January 7, 2012.
- ^ "The Walking Dead Season 3: Michael Rooker Confirms His Return as Merle". Daily Dead. March 17, 2012. Retrieved March 18, 2012.
- ^ (CONTAINS SPOILERS) The Making of Episode 303, Walk With Me: Inside The Walking Dead The Walking Dead (October 28, 2012)
- ^ Handlen, Zack (October 28, 2012). "Walk with Me". The A.V. Club. Retrieved October 29, 2012.
- ^ Sepinwall, Alan (November 4, 2012). "Review: 'The Walking Dead' - 'Killer Within': Hard labor". HitFix. Retrieved November 15, 2012.
- ^ Handlen, Zack (November 4, 2012). "Killer Within". The A.V. Club. The Onion, Inc. Retrieved November 4, 2012.
- ^ Handlen, Zack (November 18, 2012). "Hounded". The A.V. Club. Onion Inc.
- ^ Kain, Erik (December 3, 2012). "'The Walking Dead' Midseason Finale Review: Made To Suffer". Forbes. Retrieved January 9, 2013.
- ^ Handlen, Zack (December 2, 2012). "Made to Suffer". The A.V. Club. Onion Inc. Retrieved December 3, 2012.
- ^ Franich, Darren (February 11, 2013). "'The Walking Dead' recap: No Bullets in Me". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved February 28, 2013.
- ^ Handlen, Zack (February 10, 2013). "The Suicide King". The A.V. Club. Onion Inc. Retrieved February 12, 2013.
- ^ Goldman, Eric (March 24, 2013). "The Walking Dead: "This Sorrowful Life" Review". IGN. Retrieved March 24, 2013.
- ^ a b c Handlen, Zack (March 24, 2013). "This Sorrowful Life". The A.V. Club. Retrieved April 4, 2013.
Bibliography
- Keetley, Dawn (2014). "Introduction". In Keetley, Dawn (ed.). "We're All Infected": Essays on AMC's The Walking Dead and the Fate of the Human. McFarland. p. 9. ISBN 978-0786476282.
- Kirk, Chris (27 March 2013). "The Walking Dead, Season 3". Slate. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
External links
- Merle Dixon on IMDb