'The Walking Dead' Creator Says Daryl Dixon Isn't Gay

Many moons ago, a lifetime in Internet-speak, ‘The Walking Dead’ courted a bit of faux-scandal in interview comments that saw creator Robert Kirkman acknowledging the possibility of the seemingly asexual Daryl Dixon to emerge as a gay character. Despite the unlikelihood of the AMC horror-drama devoting any real time to the matter, now Kirkman has opened up on Daryl’s sexuality to finally set the record…well, straight.

As revealed during Kirkman’s appearance on last night’s ‘Talking Dead,’ Kirkman acknowledged the controversy caused by his response to a fan letter in the comic books, eventually clarifying that while neither he nor the network would have objected, Norman Reedus fan-favorite Daryl Dixon should be considered heterosexual. To wit, the season 5's latter half will in fact introduce a noted gay character from the comics, though Kirkman understandably declined to say which.

From the segment:

In The Walking Dead letters column in the old comic book that I do, there was a question that made me mention that there was a possibility early on about making Daryl Dixon’s character gay and it caused quite a hubbub online. I just wanted to make it clear that I was saying the possibility is there and I would’ve been fine with it, the network would have been fine with it, but we ultimately didn’t do that. I can make it official, Daryl Dixon is actually straight, but coming back in the next half of the season we’re going to be introducing a very prominent gay character from comics that’ll be debuting, so be on the look out from that.

I’ll be honest, my eyes have been locked into a consistent roll from the moment the original headlines began washing over the internet, and no amount of ham sandwiches would assuage my disdain. Wonderful as it would be if everyone’s favorite crossbow-wielding warrior turned out to represent the LGBT cause, the fact remains that Kirkman only ever acknowledged the pure possibility of Daryl’s sexuality, in the process reminding people that the endless zombie hack-and-slash wouldn’t leave much time to explore such an incidental issue.

And while it makes for a great headline to splash across the interwebz, it feels ultimately reductive of the issue to sensationalize the mere potential of a character coming out as gay, rather than the likelihood or confirmation of. We certainly wouldn’t devote as much talk toward an asexual character potentially preferring the opposite sex, so from a creative standpoint, why obsess over anything the writers simply haven’t made a priority to explore?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make a ham sandwich, and get back to obsessing over the banal minutia of ‘Star Wars’ trailers. Can we drop this now?