'Twisted Metal' Floors It in Season 2

Peacock’s first season of Twisted Metal had a somewhat tenuous connection to the video game series it was adapting. The games are very plot-light and drop the players into a chaotic demolition derby with only the barest necessary plot framing. The Peacock series adaptation made the sensible choice to tell a prequel story that would flesh out the post-apocalyptic world and set the table for the titular death race. The Twisted Metal tournament wasn’t revealed until the end of the first season, in which our amnesiac hero John Doe (Anthony Mackie) is coerced into competing by the COO of New San Francisco, Raven (Neve Campbell). If the first season was an admirable, if sometimes wobbly preamble, then the second season is a cannon-blast of fire, raunch, and color. With new characters, stakes, and a seemingly larger budget, Twisted Metal finally serves up the Wacky-Races-on-bath-salts it was meant to serve.

That said, the three-episode premiere takes its time introducing new faces and dynamics for Twisted Metal to play with before all the car combat. Compared to the first season, where most characters came and went within an episode or two, the second season seems to bank on its cast sticking around for much longer. The Twisted Metal tournament could start at any moment, and the enigmatic leader Calypso (Anthony Carrigan in a creepy wig) will grant a wish to whoever wins. Spending this time on each of these characters lets that eventual struggle have some weight to it, along with all the dark laughs. There’s a new Raven in town, played by She-Hulk: Attorney at Law fan favorite Patty Guggenheim. She explains for those of us at home that there are multiple Ravens all over New San Francisco, all serving various functions. This Raven appears to be Raven Alpha, as she seems to be the one giving the orders. She has John playing racing video games (including Twisted Metal II) as training for the big tournament so that she can use the wish to bring her best friend back from a coma.

For his part, John tries at every possible second to escape the city and go looking for Quiet (Stephanie Beatriz). Thwarted by Raven and her goons, he binge-reads The Baby-Sitters Club books in his childhood home. Alas, the missing 89th book can’t be found, which Mackie plays with a genuinely funny panic. Quiet has fallen in with the Dolls, a gang of punky ladies who wear white masks and raid the vehicles going in and out of the megacities. Their leader, Krista (Tiana Okoye), goes by Dollface and wants to lead her girls to tear down the walls of a megacity. She’s also John’s sister, and she’s looking for him. She has an absolutist attitude about the insiders of the cities and the outsiders of the wastes. Quiet plans to win the tournament, to wish for all the walls to fall so that there can be an even playing field.

Elsewhere in the wasteland, Sweet Tooth (Joe Seanoa’s body with Will Arnett’s voice) is chasing fame. A terrified victim assumes Sweet Tooth is another notorious road warrior, Big Baby. Insulted at being upstaged, Sweet Tooth goes hunting for all the known killers so that he can be the murder star he’s always meant to be. He tutors the cinnamon roll goofball Stu (Mike Mitchell) in the art of killing, though Stu’s not great at it. At least they seem to be best friends!

These characters all meander their way toward the tournament one way or the other. Across all the different plotlines, Twisted Metal commits to its shticky, effusive, and gross sense of action-humor. The aforementioned Big Baby is an oaf with a long umbilical cord with a spiked placenta at the end of it that he throws around like a meteor hammer. Ashley (Nikki Duval), one of the Dolls, is a hilariously crude friend who no one likes that tries to torture John’s nipples with a hole-puncher. A crazed scientist trying to make car-people is so mortified by the implication that he’s a racist that his dying words are “But… some of my best friends… are Black…” After a crazy battle, Quiet and snarky runaway Mayhem (Saylor Bell Curda) sing along to Michelle Branch.

Though solidly on the sillier side of dystopian storytelling, Twisted Metal becomes more supernatural this season with the introduction of Mr. Grimm (Richard de Klerk) and Axel (Michael James Shaw), two of the flashier characters from the games. The skeletally themed Grimm seems to suck the souls out of his victims and speaks with their voices. It’s unclear how “real” this power is within the world of the show, but de Klerk makes a very fun meal out of it. Axel stands on a moving platform with his arms bound on either side to two gigantic wheels. He’s got a surly Frankenstein’s monster vibe and would probably hate Titane.

Overall, Twisted Metal’s second season is an absolute blast. It’s on every level an improvement over the first season. Where the first season wandered, the second season is all propulsion. In this more confident, cohesive, and funny form, Twisted Metal is like a filthy-mouthed, dirty-minded cousin to Fallout. I can’t wait for more of this wild world and all the grimy weirdos that inhabit it.