Behind Blue Eyes: Reflections on the Demise of Merle Dixon

The death of Merle Dixon echoed through the "Walking Dead" fandom like a gunshot. For a moment, there was only stillness and horror as we watched Daryl dissolve into sobbing, inconsolable grief. Then, as the younger Dixon stabbing his zombified brother's face into a messy goo and the credits rolled, the internet erupted.

Admit it. If you ran into a zombie with a knife hand, you'd poop yourself and die.

Even dead, Merle scares the crap out of us.

Original image found here.

Some folks were pleased. They never liked Merle. And honestly, what was there to like? Merle was a drug-using racist asshole who was introduced to us in season 1 as the guy playing alpha male and popping shots off in the middle of zombie-filled Atlanta. When he turned up as the sadistic right hand of the Governor, no one was really surprised. Merle had "henchman" written all over him. The way he pummeled Glenn into mush and then shoved a walker in to finish him really cinched it. Merle was the devil. He recognized that everyone must see him that way, himself, in "This Sorrowful Life."

"Buck up, son. This is still better than if it came to arm-wrestling."

Original image found here.

But Merle had always given hints that he was more than just a redneck stereotype fit only for slaughter. For one thing, whether you love him or you hate him, you can't deny that he's  a complete badass. I don't think a single one of us can imagine having the stones to saw off our own hand, stumble downstairs without fainting, and cauterize the wound on a stove. And even if we could even manage such a thing, I doubt the average Joe would be able to fight his way out of Atlanta one-handed and haul ass to safety while weak from blood loss. No, I think in Merle's situation, most people would've curled up into a weepy, shivering ball of human misery and waited for death to find them.

"I have feelings. Shhhh. Don't tell anyone."

Original image found here. 

Coming back as a hallucination in season 2, Merle was as antagonistic as ever, haranguing a fallen Daryl with a varied and colorful array of insults to his manhood and fortitude. But even as a hallucination, there was a  sense that Merle considered himself to be acting for Daryl's own good. And indeed, through his stinging hail of verbal barbs, he drove his weary brother up and out of the gorge so that he could seek treatment for the injuries he sustained in his fall.

"And if you do not go, I shall taunt you a second time!"

Original image found here.

When we finally catch up with the corporeal Merle and his shiny new knife-hand in season 3, the only thing our pal Merle can think of once he knows Daryl's still out there is finding his baby brother. And you have to wonder why. Merle's been painted as an unsentimental hardass up to this point. He's not a nice guy, he's not a caring guy, and we'd never actually seen these two interact in the flesh. It seems like a harsh question to ask about any human being, but I had to wonder, did he want his brother back because he loved him or was it a control thing? Did he miss his brother's company, or did he have to have him because he was HIS brother?

*singing* "I can't liiiiiiiive... if living is without you!"

Original image found here.

Honestly, I didn't know until the two Dixons left the group to fend for themselves in "Home." Predictably, despite Daryl leaving the people he'd come to care for and respect to be with Merle, Merle continued to berate and deride his brother. And seeing Daryl spurred to heroics to help stranded strangers escape from walkers doesn't make Merle any kinder. He clearly regarded his brother's bravery as the worst sort of foolishness. But then their conversation takes a turn. Merle is aghast to discover that his brother had taken the beatings Merle used to suffer at their father's hands in Merle's absence. It sets him back, throws him off his macho game, and leaves him fumbling for equilibrium. You can tell he hates that this happened to his brother, and he wants to make things right somehow, but he knows that he'll never be welcome at the prison. In the end, he goes back, because Daryl makes it clear that he's going back with or without him.

"This Sorrowful Life" then gives us Merle in his death throes, thrashing like prey in the jaws of an alligator. He knows how they all see him. Even as Daryl tries to talk Glenn into forgiving Merle for that whole attempted murder business, Merle is aware that the group looks at him as the bad guy and probably always will. There's something particularly wild in his search for drugs in the prison bedding. I saw someone who can't stay still, who can't stay within his own skin without the benefit of a little medicinally-induced dullness. 

He seemed to welcome the grim, murderous task of delivering Michonne. This was the best they could expected of him, that he would do their dirty work for them. And he decided, when Rick asked him to do it, to live up to their expectations. If they wanted him to be soulless garbage, then he would be soulless garbage and do the thing that none of them had the stomach for. And Merle decided there would be no going back on this. Rick wanted him to be the hooded executioner taking the taunts and jeers of the crowd for him, and he was going to carry out his orders even if they were rescinded. So he took Michonne and bore her off to be their sacrificial lamb.

She did get under his skin, digging in about how he wasn't the man he tried to pretend he was. That he wouldn't lament being a bad guy if he really was one. And truthfully, it was telling that he had never killed anyone before the apocalypse and that he kept count of those he did since then. The count suggested to me a man who felt each death leave a mark on his soul, which wouldn't be the case if he had no soul to speak of. 

When Merle let Michonne go and went on his sniper mission against the Governor's men, we all knew Merle had decided then that he wasn't coming back to the prison. That he wasn't coming back anywhere, if he could help it. But the why of it had people confused. And yet, while I wholeheartedly agree that the motivation behind Merle's final mission could have been much more clearly developed, I completely understood it.

In this episode, Merle realized that his brother had a new family. Daryl had a place in the prison, with these people who cared for him and respected him. They would never feel that way about Merle. He could only linger in the shadows, pissing them off and accepting the brunt of their hateful stares as his due, and be the outsider there by Daryl's grace alone. And chances are, he was going to screw it up for Daryl. I think when he was hunting up drugs, he could feel the restlessness that drives him to sin stirring, wanting to fight and rant and raise Hell. And he may have been trying to resist it, to dull it, but he'd give in eventually and ruin everything. Then he'd put Daryl in the position of choosing between Merle, who didn't know how to treat him well, or the group of people who did. 

It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Merle had come to see himself as the others did, to believe himself incapable of better. And because all he could do was drag Daryl down with him, he did the only useful thing he could think of: he decided to take himself out of the picture and bring as many of those Woodbury bastards with him as possible. 

What he couldn't do was go back and face the group after doing exactly what was expected of him. He couldn't pretend like he was capable of being a better man. He just had to fight as cleverly and as brutally as only he knew how, and hope that his brother would be better for it. 

Which actually showed that he would have been capable of being a good man, if he had only been able to believe it, himself.

"You've got to play the hand you're dealt. I only got one."

-Merle Dixon in "This Sorrowful Life."

Original image found here. 

I wasn't happy that Merle died in the end. I was torn apart by Daryl's reaction, and by the notions of what might have been if Merle had just had an ounce of faith in himself. And for myself, I suspect that even if this had to be Merle's end, it could have done him more justice if we'd gotten to see a few more glimpses of the man he really was beneath the bad guy, the henchman, the racist redneck and verbally abusive older brother. There was more to Merle, and we only scratched the surface. But I was happy to have the answer to my question in the end. Merle did love Daryl, and he loved him more than his own life.

This one's for you, Merle.

"Behind Blue Eyes" by The Who