It’s drive or die in Twisted Metal season 2. Two years ago, the first season’s “SHNGRLA” finale ended with former milkman John Doe (Anthony Mackie) and mute Quiet (Stephanie Beatriz) axing psychopathic officer Agent Stone (Thomas Haden Church) in a showdown at Midtown Raceway. Raven (Neve Campbell) tried to tempt the amnesiac John Doe with answers about his past, only to then hire the skilled driver for the eponymous demolition derby: Twisted Metal, a tournament where the only rule is to survive.
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“The winner gets their heart’s desire, their greatest wish come true,” Raven said of the prize offered by the mysterious Calypso (Anthony Carrigan). “You’re gonna help me win, and you’re gonna do it by getting behind the wheel and turning every car and contestant that crosses your path into nothing but a flaming pile of twisted metal. You will drive, John Doe, and you will win.”
In season 2, John and Quiet enter the deadly Twisted Metal tournament and try to survive an onslaught of dangerous new foes and familiar faces alike, including murderous clown Sweet Tooth (Samoa Joe and Will Arnett), Axel (Michael James Shaw), Vermin (Lisa Gilroy), and John’s long-lost sister, the masked vigilante Dollface (Tiana Okoye).
“I want you to care about these characters,” showrunner Michael Jonathan Smith, who created the series with Deadpool writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, told ComicBook and other outlets during a set visit. “We’re setting up a world, and it’s a post-apocalyptic world that’s very specific. We want you to understand how the world works, and how the characters work, and how the story is really about John and Quiet, and their relationship, and their emotional connection.”
“We wanted to build something that got to the tournament, so when the tournament happened, it meant something,” Smith continued. “So that when you’re coming into the tournament, you’re like, ‘Okay, I understand the world, I understand the characters, and now we can have fun.’ What is it like for all these people to be in one place? What is it like for them to have life and death situations? And what is it like for them to have a drive and a wish? Because that’s what’s so great about the games, is inherently, every character has a drive.”
Smith also acknowledged another reason for holding off on the titular tournament until the second season: cost. “The tournament, as I’m finding right now, is extremely expensive,” he quipped.
“If we’re going to do [Twisted Metal], I want to do it right,” Smith said of the vehicular combat competition, adding that the goal in “SHNGRLA” was “to recapture the feeling of the tournament without doing a tournament round, and to show the audience, ‘We know we’re going to do more.’”
As for the tournament itself, the former Cobra Kai writer-producer likened the show’s demolition derby to everything from the Jean-Claude Van Damme-fronted martial arts tournament movie Bloodsport to the lethal car-racing Death Race franchise and Squid Game, which also centers on deadly games.
“[It’s] a little bit of Bloodsport for sure, a little bit of Squid Game in terms of the way that the structure of the tournament goes,” Smith said. “I really loved how that show did that. I wrote on Cobra Kai for a long time, so obviously I’m very involved in how tournaments work, having written some tournament episodes. We’re really trying to pull from all of the Death Race [movies], of course. Really trying to pull from a little bit of everything, and of course the [Twisted Metal] games. We’re really trying to pull from a little bit of everything, while still being us. What is the Twisted Metal version of those things?”
Twisted Metal season 2 will “go crazier” and “go bigger,” Smith teased of the 16-driver roster that features contestants like Stu (Mike Mitchell), Chuckie Floop (André Dae Kim), Mr. Grimm (Richard de Klerk), Deacon (Tyler Johnston), and Mayhem (Saylor Bell Curda).
“We have 16 characters entering the tournament to start. So we really want to make sure that every character has something going on, a storyline, an arc,” Smith said, noting that “some characters won’t fit in this season, but that doesn’t mean that the door’s closed.”
“They can always come back. I mean, it’s Twisted Metal,” he said. “But it’s really about, what are the most interesting people for John and Quiet to interact with, and what are the combinations that are exciting? Now we have John and Quiet interact with Sweet Tooth. Sweet Tooth and Stu are interacting with these people, with Holy Men, what is that like?”
“What’s fun for this season is, when we get to the tournament, it’s so much about John and Quiet, but it also kind of becomes an ensemble,” Smith continued. “You’re seeing these other characters come in. Vermin, who’s new, interacting with Sweet Tooth, who’s old, and Sweet Tooth has a past with Grimm that we’re setting up, so it’s really all about what is best for the show, and what’s going to be the most interesting thing to watch.”
Twisted Metal season 2 premieres July 31 on Peacock.
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Courtesy of Toei Animation
