The Walking Dead Season 4 Photo Shows A Masked Daryl

Daryl The Walking Dead

Are we being punished here? Ok, maybe that's an exaggerated reaction, but after celebrating the presence of on Daryl Dixon - mostly front and center-ish - on the Walking Dead Comic-Con banner, the newest photo from the anticipated fourth season of The Walking Dead gives us another glimpse of Daryl, unfortunately most of his face is covered up with a bandana. Optimistically, partial-view Daryl is better than no Daryl at all though, right? And there's no mistaking the hair and the eyes, or the guns. Arm-guns that is. We all know Daryl favors the crossbow as his weapon of choice.

So what exactly is going on here? EW offers a bit of fun speculation involving convenience store robberies and Jesse James impersonations, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say Daryl's trying to avoid some kind of smell or disease. A bandana might not do much to deflect really infectious germs though, so let's lean toward the smell theory. They're in zombie-country, after all, where dead bodies - both reanimated and fully dead - seem to be plentiful. There's also the potential for rotten animals and/or food to be stinking up the place. Maybe Daryl's tasked with dealing with a particularly smelly situation and he's wearing the mask to curb the stench. Or he just wants to look like an outlaw, because looking tough-guy is always in season on TWD... not that Daryl needs to accessorize to pull of that look.

We'll see even more from Season 4 after next week when the series is featured at a Comic-Con panel. Here are the details on that, which promise a sneak preview of Season 4, in addition to a Q&A with the writers and cast, for those of you who are planning on attending SDCC:

Friday July 19, 2013 1:35pm - 2:30pm - Hall HSeries stars Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan, Danai Gurira, David Morrissey, Scott Wilson, and Chad Coleman join executive producer and showrunner Scott Gimple, executive producer Robert Kirkman, executive producer Gale Anne Hurd, executive producer Dave Alpert, and special effects makeup supervisor and executive producer Greg Nicotero in a panel moderated by Chris Hardwick (The Nerdist, Talking Dead). The panelists will discuss the record-breaking third season of The Walking Dead and what to look forward to in season 4, debuting this fall on AMC. Join the panelists for a one-on-one Q&A session and an official sneak preview of season 4.

There's also a panel focused on the comics:

Thursday July 18, 2013 4:15pm - 5:15pm - Room 6A - Robert Kirkman discusses the evolution of The Walking Dead and his plans to celebrate its 10th anniversary this year, in a lively Q&A forum.

The new photo follows the previously revealed Season 4 photo, which shows us Rick in the woods.

TWD Rick

Kelly West
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Kelly joined CinemaBlend as a freelance TV news writer in 2006 and went on to serve as the site’s TV Editor before moving over to other roles on the site. At present, she’s an Assistant Managing Editor who spends much of her time brainstorming and editing feature content on the site. She an expert in all things Harry Potter, books from a variety of genres (sci-fi, mystery, horror, YA, drama, romance -- anything with a great story and interesting characters.), watching Big Brother, frequently rewatching The Office, listening to Taylor Swift, and playing The Sims.