After letting us process the first season’s half-naked murder clowns and sinister dollfaced thugs for two years, Peacock’s Twisted Metal series is returning with a deeper connection to the source material. On July 31, Anthony Mackie and the rest of the Divided States of America will be back for the show’s second season, but this time with key elements that align the TV series more with the video game franchise lore.
In the first season, amnesiac delivery driver John Doe (Anthony Mackie) navigates a demented preacher’s cult, roadside cannibals, and a comedy routine by Sweet Tooth (the physicality of Joe Seanoa aka Samoa Joe and the voice of Will Arnett) that could’ve turned deadly, all to deliver a package from Raven (Neve Campbell) to New San Francisco. By the end of the season, it’s revealed that the package delivery is just one piece in a plan to produce the deadly car combat tournament that made the Twisted Metal video games famous. We also find out that his long-lost sister Dollface (Tiana Okoye), who we’ll find out is named Krista in the second season, is the leader of a group of female vigilantes known as the Dolls. And that’s just the beginning of the newness coming to the second season.
IGN’s latest digital cover story on the series reveals that the upcoming season will feature 12 episodes compared to the 10 from the first season, and will have the highly anticipated tournament take place throughout the latter half of the season. Mr. Grimm, one of only three characters to appear in every Twisted Metal game, will debut as the soul-stealing biker in the second season, and will be portrayed by Richard de Klerk. In addition to him, fans can expect the second season to introduce arguably the most recognizable character from the Twisted Metal games, the half-man, half-murder vehicle Axel, appearing in War Wheel form. Axel is famously known as the muscular man who rides around with two gigantic wheels on his arms. Twisted Metal showrunner Michael Jonathan Smith explained Axel was missing from the first season because they hadn’t yet figured out how to bring him to the live-action screen.
“How do you do a character that is literally a giant muscular man stuck between two gigantic wheels? You look at the design and you say, ‘How?’ And then after you ask why. And I think it was a challenge. Absolutely.”
Smith assures us that Axel will appear in the second season in a rig that looks more makeshift than futuristic, noting that this is a “1.0 version of Axel” that’s still being worked on by whoever created Axel in the show. As long as he’s rolling around causing mayhem with the rest of the contestants in the live-action Twisted Metal battle royale, we’ll be happy murder voyeurs when July 31 comes around.
