The episode begins as Daryl (Norman Reedus) drives the cart into a town, and Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) says, helpfully, “This is the town of Angers.” They stop in a square outside a rundown theatre, and Daryl gives Sylvie (Laïka Blanc-Francard) his gun with an instruction to protect the horse. Maybe he regrets sending Asteríx the mule to certain death last week.

Daryl and Isabelle go inside. Isabelle’s contact is a musician who has been living here for years. A door behind a rack of theatrical costumes opens, and a wild-eyed man with eccentric Beethoven hair emerges, addressing them in French. The subtitles are also in French, so I can’t tell you what he’s saying. As he approaches, Daryl holds up a hand to stop him, and tells Isabelle to ask about the radio, without so much as a “my-name-is-Daryl-Dixon-I-come-from-a-place-called-the-Commonwealth.” Crazy Beethoven realizes Daryl is “Anglais.” “I speak,” he says. “Sky blue, grass green. Where is Brian? He is in the kitchen?” I’m hazarding a guess that this man is not of entirely sound mind.

Beethoven takes them downstairs into a cluttered office where there is a radio. Daryl rattles its bits ineffectively, reminding me of the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Isabelle says something in French about a place called Le Nid, and Beethoven replies “Yes, of course. The radio could call to there.” Daryl stops pretending he knows anything about technology and asks the man to fire up the radio. “Oh no,” says the man in dismay, and asks if they would like a show. “What the fuck?” says Daryl, and Beethoven tells Isabelle that he used some of the radio parts for “amplification.” “Do you like Ravel?” he asks and starts playing Boléro through a makeshift sound system. He goes upstairs, telling Isabelle and Daryl to follow him into the auditorium.

Tonight, an all-new episode of the spinoff of the popular franchise, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, premieres on AMC and AMC Plus. The episode features the French performer Hugo Bardin as the drag queen, Coco, in the nightclub the Demimonde. Known professionally as Paloma, the performer is known for winning the debut season of Drag Race France. Bardin recently spoke with SciFi Vision about his time on Daryl Dixon, including how Norman Reedus actually asked for him to be on the series!

Read the full transcript below, and be sure to tune in to the episode, tonight on AMC and AMC Plus.

The episode opens with a flashback. Isabelle (Cleménce Poésy), dressed in eveningwear, stands on a rooftop looking out over pre-apocalypse Paris. Behind her is a brightly lit nightclub, electronic music blasting. She goes inside, weaving her way between dancers, eyeing people and being eyed by men. She chooses a man with whom to dance, and they break it down in slow motion until she walks away. She lets two other men buy her drinks as the evening passes, and she snorts some cocaine. We see the scars on her wrist from her suicide attempt. Guess we’re not flashing back far enough to find out about those.

Eventually, she puts her coat on and leaves, stopping in the lobby while she waits for the elevator. In her purse are men’s watches, which she has spent the night stealing. She stares at herself in the mirror doors of the elevator. She doesn’t like herself. Her hair looks great though, 10/10 for that. Screaming comes from inside the club, and she walks into a quiet corridor, taking pills out her bag and swallowing some. We get it: the nun was once a drug-snorting, pill-popping thief. Everything slows down again as her high hits. 

Apple's Fall Kids & Family Premieres - All-New Spooky Adventure Series “CURSES!” from DreamWorks Animation & Exec. Produced by John Krasinski, Plus “Interrupting Chicken” S2 & New “Shape Island” Halloween Special

Apple TV+ announces all-new spooky adventure series, “CURSES!,” from DreamWorks Animation premiering globally October 27
 
Animated preschool series “Interrupting Chicken,” starring the voice talents of Emmy Award winner Sterling K. Brown returns for season two on September 29, with more imaginative stories 
 
Plus, “Shape Island” is back on October 20 with a brand new Halloween-themed special 
  
Apple TV+ today announced a fun-filled autumn slate of all-new kids and family programming, featuring both CG and stop-motion animation offerings, including brand new series “CURSES!” launching October 27; season two of “Interrupting Chicken,” premiering September 29; and a new “Shape Island” Halloween special debuting October 20. 

Warning: this story contains spoilers for the most recent episode of Invasion (episode 204, “The Tunnel.”) Proceed with caution.

The latest episode of Invasion turned our attention back to Jamila and the gang making their way to France via the tunnel under the English Channel. The last train to go in never came out and the military is blocking all traffic, so the kids decided to ditch the car and walk. What they found inside just might be a game changer, and not in a good way. Those spiky, spidery alien ground troops are no longer a problem, because they have been replaced by a faster, deadlier version!

SciFi Vision wanted to know more about the new threat, so we got together with Invasion’s Visual Effects Supervisor, Erik Henry. He’s one of the best in the business and has worked on some of the most visually striking films in recent memory, including Oscar winners The Abyss, Total Recall, and Batman Returns. In television, he won Emmy Awards for his work on Black Sails and the blockbuster miniseries John Adams. Henry is also busy; in addition to Invasion, he is the senior VFX Supervisor on Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and recently served on The Old Man and Westworld. We couldn’t wait to talk to him.

Henry began by explaining how and why the original invaders evolved, and what they have become.

The original spiked creature, he said, “is called the worker alien. The idea is that it was brought here to terraform the planet, and yes, while it is dangerous and kills, it's not until you get into season two that you find yourself face to face with what we'll call the warrior class, where they step it up a notch, and they're a lot scarier.”

Aitch Alberto has been on a mission. When she read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, she knew immediately that she wanted to tell the story onscreen. Nine years later, she is celebrating the release of her new movie in theaters. 

Based on the beloved YA novel by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Alberto’s film is a beautiful, sensitive story of two teenagers coming of age in Texas in the 1980s. Quiet, resentful Aristotle (Max Pelayo) and free-spirited Dante (Reese Gonzalez) couldn’t be more different, but they quickly become best friends. With Dante’s influence, Ari begins a journey of self-discovery and discovers secrets he didn’t even know he was keeping. In addition to Pelayo and Reese, the film features a powerhouse supporting cast that includes Eugenio Derbez, Eva Longoria, Veronica Falcón and Kevin Alejandro. 

What was it about this story that inspired Alberto to write and direct the film? As a trans Latina woman, she felt both passion and responsibility. 

 “The book had a gentleness and a lyricism that we don't often see when it comes to these stories,” she told SciFi Vision.  “I was really impassioned, and it felt really urgent for me to be the person that brings these characters to life, because I think it's necessary for my community to have an option that we haven't seen before. 

Daryl (Norman Reedus) washes up on a beach, tied to a capsized boat. Exhausted, he collapses on the sand. He is parched, but half-buried in the sand further up the beach is a child’s plastic bucket. It could be full of saltwater or dog urine, but he gulps its contents without doing so much as a finger test.

Leaving the beach, Daryl figures out he is in France when he sees a French sign. He is unmoved by this discovery, or perhaps so shaken by it that his face is briefly paralyzed. He plods onwards, and likely realizes around the same time as we do that France, like the cast of The Walking Dead, looks hot even in the apocalypse. 

He finds a boat, which helpfully contains some bottled water, a map, and a dictaphone with working batteries, twelve years into the apocalypse. Oh la la! The British owner of the boat voice-journaled, and we see a montage of Daryl cooking fish and looking at the map as he listens. Tragically, the Brit’s wife died, and he speaks mournfully on the tape of how his daughter wants to go home. Daryl does too. He picks up a stuffed penguin as he contemplates home. Is this a sniggering gesture towards the fact that he will shortly meet a different kind of “penguin,” in the form of a nun? I very much fear it is. 

Tonight, the newest spinoff of the The Walking Dead franchise, Daryl Dixon, hits AMC and AMC Plus. In the series, Daryl (Norman Reedus) washes ashore in France where he travels across the country hoping to make his way home. On the way, he meets a group of people who complicate that goal, including nun Isabelle (Clémence Poésy), from the Union de L’Espoir (Union of Hope), who thinks that Daryl is the one to escort Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi), who they believe to be humanity’s greatest hope, across the country to a place called The Nest. Causing further complications, is soldier Codron (Romain Levi), hell-bent on killing him, who works for the political group Pouvoir des Vivantes, and their leader, Genet (Anne Charrier).

Recently, Scigliuzzi, Levi, and Charrier, along with Eriq Ebouaney, who plays Fallou, spoke with the media about the new series. SciFi Vision was on hand to ask the group to talk about what it was like joining such a popular franchise.

The young Scigliuzzi admitted that he didn’t know much about the original series, but added that it does, however, mean a lot to him.

The adult performers, however, were more familiar with the franchise. “I was a fan,” Charrier told the site. “I'd seen all the seasons, so being a part of it was just amazing…I think fans like me would have never thought they could be a part of the show.”

***The following contains slight spoilers***

Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) is a man in crisis in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon: a physical crisis, a spiritual crisis, and, apparently, an identity crisis. The six-episode series, a second season of which is currently in production, has a fresh aesthetic, an accomplished supporting cast, and a title which is occasionally necessary as a reminder of who the man on screen is intended to be.

Beautifully filmed, with a soundtrack of wistful French songs and haunting orchestral numbers, the latest offering from The Walking Dead universe features an excellent, mostly French cast alongside Reedus, including Clémence Poésy, Adam Nagaitis, Anne Charrier, Eriq Ebouaney, Laїka Blanc-Francard, Romain Levi, and Louis Puech Scigliuzzi. France offers exquisite backdrops for the story.

But the shiny new setting only emphasizes how unfamiliar Reedus’s character has become. One wonders how much the lack of narrative coherence has to do with the “pretty late in the game” transition away from the Angela Kang–led spinoff featuring Daryl alongside Melissa McBride’s Carol Peletier. In the wake of that tumultuous change, we’re left with an often shaky premise centered on themes of fatherhood, fate, and finding one’s purpose.

At long last, Invasion is back! Fans of the sci-fi drama have waited two long years for the show’s second season, which debuted this week exclusively on Apple TV+. Ten new episodes will drop each Wednesday until the season finale on October 25.

And by all accounts, it was worth the wait. After a first season built around the character development, season two dials up the action. We rejoin the survivors four months later, as the reality of the alien invasion has set in, and humanity begins to fight back. Trevante, Aneesha, Mitsuki, Casper and Jamila are still scattered around the globe, still experiencing the invasion in very different ways, but across the ten episodes viewers will see a more complete picture of the aliens and their capabilities.

Just before the season premiere, SciFi Vision spoke with director Alik Sakharov, who helmed four of the first five episodes (201,202, 203 and 205). Anyone who has watched premium cable or streaming in the last 15 years knows Alik Sakharov’s work as a director of photography on HBO’s Rome, Game of Thrones and an incredible 38 episodes of The Sopranos. He has also directed many episodes of Thrones, the Starz hit Black Sails, Netflix’s House of Cards and The Witcher, and Hulu’s Ozark, for which he received an Emmy nomination.