This story contains spoilers for Season 2 of Peacock’s “Twisted Metal”
Season 2 of Peacock’s “Twisted Metal” saw the violent conclusion of Calypso’s tournament, but there weren’t really any true winners.
The tournament starts with 7 drivers and six cars. But by the end of the final round, Calypso (Anthony Carrigan) unleashes Minion: a demonic creature created from Dollface’s (Tiana Okoye) corpse, who attacks John (Anthony Mackie) and Quiet (Stephanie Beatriz). The pair ultimately defeat Minion and there are no cars left standing except for Stu (Mike Mitchell).
He is ultimately named winner of the Twisted Metal tournament and is granted his wish: to go someplace safe with just him and Mike (Tahj Vaughans). Calypso ends up sending him and Mike’s corpse to a space capsule orbiting the Earth.
After the tournament, John, Quiet and Mayhem escape to Copper Mountain, where they find the former’s childhood home. But the moment of solace is quickly interrupted when John and Quiet learn they’ve been framed for a bombing that triggers a war between the insiders and outsiders. They are then attacked once again by Minion, but are rescued and able to escape with the help of Stu, who has returned from his space voyage. The group decides that they will try to kill Calypso in the hopes of getting Dollface back, but will have to travel through the war zone to get to him.
Meanwhile, Sweet Tooth (Joe Seanoa), who is seemingly thought to have been killed during the tournament, is very much alive and is seen in the final moments of the finale being dragged to The Eastern Sovereignty, overseen by Charlie Kane. In the game, Kane is the son of Marcus Kane, a.k.a. Sweet Tooth. However, the series has appeared to reverse their lineage, making Charlie Sweet Tooth’s father.
While Peacock has not made a decision on whether “Twisted Metal” will get a Season 3, showrunner Michael Jonathan Smith told TheWrap there would be “a lot of payoffs to a lot of ideas” if the show gets renewed.
“We’re going bigger with the world. The Divided States of America is at war,” he teased. “I’m very much imagining that this is the next tournament. It’s the insiders versus the outsiders that John and Quiet have to get through to get to Calypso. How do they defeat Calypso? Can they defeat Calypso? What does that look like?”
“There’s more characters to meet. I know we’ve left a lot of characters on the table, like where’s Warthog? So we have a lot more of the roster to get to and I have a lot of ideas for that,” he continued. “Quite frankly, I even have an idea for Season 4 that I won’t spoil now, but I have an idea about where the end of Season 3 goes going into Season 4. So we have a lot of story left to tell with these characters. There’s also the question of Minion and Dollface and where we leave that.”
Read on for the rest of TheWrap’s chat with Smith about Season 2.
This season you expanded the cast significantly, adding characters from the game as well as more original characters. How did you decide who to add, what to change and flesh out and ultimately who makes it out alive and who dies in Season 2?
Honestly, we came at how to flesh out this tournament almost as if we approached it like, ‘Okay, what if this was the lost Twisted Metal game? What if this is our dream Twisted Metal game? Who would be the roster? What would it look like if we were on the character select screen?’ We wanted each character to look different, that there weren’t any characters that felt like too similar to each other. We wanted them to all feel different enough that they had a different vibe, a different feel, that their perspectives were all different.
And then as the tournament continued, we wanted to think a lot about how do they all work off each other? How can their stories all play off each other, especially with John and Quiet’s relationship storyline and what are the most fun for all of them to play off each other. Especially with Mayhem and Axel, we wanted to make sure all of them had their moment in the sun and were spotlighted.
We have an incredible cast of incredibly funny characters. John Wilson, Lisa Gilroy, Patty Guggenheim, just to name a few, not to mention the people who come back like Mike Mitchell. Michael James Shaw is amazing this season. We wanted all of them to feel like they had their moment in the sun while playing off Anthony and Stephanie this year.
One of the themes that runs through the season is the idea of family and belonging. Talk to me about the decision to introduce John’s sister Dollface this season and Mayhem.
John’s storyline in Season 1 was finding family. Season 2 is about, ‘okay, well, what the hell do I do with it now that I found it?’ What I love so much about John and Dollface is John has no memory of his past and Dollface has all of these memories. We really love that dynamic of the two of them reuniting and squaring those two sides of that coin.
Meanwhile, you’ve got Quiet and Mayhem that came from a place of, ‘Okay, well, John and Dollface are going to spend a fair amount of the season dealing with that relationship. I really want to have a new relationship for Quiet to deal with.’ I loved the idea of her having a new, almost little sister relationship.
Mayhem was originally going to be Dollface’s kid and the further we got into it, the more complicated it got, because then you’d want John to be like, ‘Well, this is my nephew or niece,’ and why isn’t he having a relationship? So then we went down this path of let’s make it be this con artist. And I love the idea of a character that always lied and the eureka moment was, ‘let’s make Quiet be a role model.’ What is it like for Quiet, who’s never had that opportunity, have to look out for someone and not be selfish in that way? And what is it like for her to have to look out for someone and care for someone and fill that gap that the loss of her brother left in her life? And then have to square that, especially with the fact that she’s fighting so much for her wish and having these perpendicular wants and how much that gives her trouble with her wish.
As we’ve alluded to, sparks fly between John and Quiet over the course of this season. Why did you choose to craft that romantic relationship and talk to me about the execution behind that fiery makeout scene in Episode 4?
They only knew each other for 10 days in Season 1. They essentially separate at the end of season one and they’re coming back together. It’s a seven month time jump. It’s sort of like that feeling in college where you’ve broken up with your partner and you come back to your ex being like “Do I care about him as much as I did? Have the rose-tinted goggles come off?” And we wanted to feel like they’re picking right up and we wanted to have them build back up. So we have what we called in the writers room a horny heist. And we really loved that episode and how the relationship is building and building and building.
We wanted to have our new version of the ball pit from Season 1 and we thought what better way for their their passion to erupt then to literally erupt into flames. We actually had a room that was on fire. It wasn’t as on fire as it is in the show. A lot of those are VFX, which was done by an amazing VFX team called BOT. And while we did have fire bars in that room, it got very, very hot. So hats off to Anthony and Stephanie for actually doing that in a room full of fire. But those guys were very game and were so much fun. They have so much chemistry and I really loved how that scene turned out.
Also looming large over the season is Anthony Carrigan’s Calypso. I loved seeing his backstory in the finale where he pitched Twisted Metal to NBC. How did the idea come about for that?
I can’t remember who pitched it. I think it might have been [executive producer] Grant Dekernion who pitched it. Maybe I pitched it. I think maybe it was Grant’s idea. But the idea of Calypso pitching Twisted Metal was something I immediately was like, ‘it’s in the show. We have to do it.’ It’s so funny. I love the idea of Calypso being someone who didn’t pause a lot of things, he pushes people into that direction.
He has that line in the finale where he’s like, ‘If the world isn’t ready, then I’ll just wait until it is.’ And I love that idea of him wanting this tournament to happen and waiting for the right moment for everything to be in place. His entire line where he’s like “the world will be a battleground” is just a great thesis for the way he sees the world and how he wants this chaos. He’s just this puppeteer and is always six steps ahead.
Anthony Kerrigan is incredible this season. He’s so much fun to work with as well. He’s a fan of the game, which is amazing, and he always comes into everything with ideas, and he’s so much fun to pitch with. I just loved working with him this season.
Were there any characters that you considered killing off who you didn’t or anyone who you wanted to save that you ended up killing off?
Obviously, all the characters I love and it was hard to kill any of them because they’re all so funny and so great. I won’t say who I wanted to save or kill because they’re all so amazing. And truthfully, you never know. Calypso was able to bring someone back. So we never know what malevolent powers may return them from the dead.
