The second season of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon has come to an end, which also brings our character’s time in France to a close. Before looking ahead to the next season, I wanted to look back on my favorite character in the show.
Spoilers ahead for the season 2 finale of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon.
I have to gush about Anna since this is her last season. I'm going to miss her and the establishment she ran, the Demimonde, which was a bunker in the catacombs of Paris built during the Second World War that was eventually turned into an underground nightclub. It's a unique location for The Walking Dead, and that's saying something considering France itself was already a unique location for the show.
Anna was my favorite character during our time in France. She’s a morally gray character, which is enticing, because it's harder to get inside her head and figure out her motivations. Never knowing if she’s a valuable ally or a fierce enemy, or both at different times, it adds a prism of complexity to the role.
Before the events of the show, Anna ran away from an ordinary life in her hometown in Russia to become a singer in Paris, and you get the sense that even pre-apocalypse she set out to live a life filled with art and self fulfillment. The pressures of life (even without zombies) can weigh us all down. Familial and societal obligations push and pull us, sometimes it’s hard to carve out the life we want to live on our own terms. One of the things I appreciate about Anna is that before and after the apocalypse, despite the changing environment, she’s able to chase her desires.
But it doesn’t come easy or without sacrifice. She doesn't like getting attached to people, and it feels like a defense mechanism. People often have the mindset that losing people from your life can't hurt you if you don't let them in. Just as an example, she falls for the original proprietor of the Demimonde, Quinn, in season 1. Despite her best efforts to not fall for him, she does anyway, and he ends up spurning her affections.
Regardless of their situation, the affection she initially had for him ultimately carries over to her desire to keep Quinn’s son Laurent, safe, from a group called the Union of Hope. This group pursues Laurent believing that he’s immune to the zombie virus because he was born after his birth mother had been bitten by a walker.
Near the end of season 2, Anna is in a car that gets surrounded by the Union of Hope and their current leader, Jacinta, who shoots the driver and the passenger in the car with her. Going back to the fact that Anna doesn’t like showing attachment to people around her, she seems unfazed by the attack. And I think the performance plays to the fact that you genuinely don't know if she doesn't care about the passengers or if she's just putting on a brave face.
Afterwards, Anna leads Jacinta towards a plane that’s going to help Laurent leave France and escape his pursuers, and she buys herself time to save her skin by saying she wants the plane for herself so she can go home. But earlier in the finale episode she mentions not knowing what became of her family in Russia, so I had wondered if going home was more of a poetic notion about the end of her life, knowing what the Union of Hope has been doing to people who cross them. Depending on how the situation would have turned out, she may have really wanted to go home, or it was just a lie so she could buy Laurent time to escape.
Either interpretation fits into her morally ambiguous nature. You’re never fully sure if her affection for Laurent will be greater than her desire for self preservation. She was set up like a queen as the proprietor of the Demimonde, so if she actually did want to go home, it doesn't feel like she had made prior attempts.
Anna leans into the better angels of her nature, deciding to lead Jacinta and her group into a trap, but ultimately she gets locked behind a gate with walkers, surrounded by them, and eaten. The actress has mentioned the tone of the show's script was like literature, so when she dies without showing any physical agony, I interpreted it as them prioritizing the conveyance of her emotional acceptance in the moment rather than worrying about the practicalities of being in pain. It's meant to be poetic.
Jacinta says the Union of Hope will prevail because God is on their side, but Anna, resigned to her fate, simply states “God gave up on us a long time ago”.
Despite living a life of self interest through the Demimonde, through all the luxury, decadence, and creature comforts it provides, she still ends up putting herself in harm’s way to give Laurent the chance for a better future. As a fan, it’s so satisfying to see a character who can encompass the best of both worlds and wildly vacillate between striving for personal enrichment, but also putting aside her survival instinct for the sake of someone else. It reflects the human experience. Sometimes selfish, sometimes willing to give it all for something more.
Fun fact: Lukerya Ilyashenko, who plays Anna, doesn't speak French. She spent a long time learning the lyrics to the songs she sang in the Demimonde because she didn't know what she was saying. I'm very interested in following her career after the show. She has a few movies I found streaming called "Dance to Death" and "The Blackout" which seem like good places to start.
