What Are Burners? New Zombie Variant from The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, Explained
While we already know a few zombie variants from the original show, Daryl Dixon’s spin-off introduced a new type: they are known as Burners, and here’s why they’re special.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon.
At one point in time, when the original The Walking Dead was still airing, it became obvious that some zombies were different from the others. While the vast majority of the undead were dumb and slow, some others were way smarter, a lot faster, or more capable of traversing complex landscapes. Fans started asking questions.
The franchise, in turn, reacted in a pretty expectable manner: The Walking Dead started introducing various variants of zombies. Those variants could do things normal walkers could not — some could climb, others could use weapons, etc. Variants are a common practice among zombie-apocalypse franchises, so no surprise there.
While we were already familiar with a few variants thanks to the original The Walking Dead series and some other spin-offs, the most recent show about Daryl Dixon’s journey to France features an entirely new subspecies of these nasty creatures. Unlike their peers who are simply stronger, faster, or smarter, these ones possess rather unique traits.
They are called Burners, and their distinctive feature is their acidic blood. This obviously implies quite some danger for survivors: from being unable to smash these undead out of fear of being showered in acid to being burned by their touch, people must exercise extreme caution when dealing with Burners. Their blood is dangerous.
Curiously, Burners were most likely created by scientists. There are many hints throughout the first season of Daryl Dixon that directly or indirectly point at that, and it’s only logical to assume that Burners came to be as a result of an experiment gone…well, we can’t be sure if it went right or wrong. Depends on the goals.
However, from everything we’ve seen in the show so far, it becomes pretty apparent that dealing with Burners and, eventually, the people who created them will become one of the many problems on Daryl’s extensive list. Sooner or later, we’ll learn the truth about this acidic zombie variant — and perhaps, we’ll even see their masters.