Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched Twisted Metal the entire way through, so be warned!
Throughout the ten episodes that make up Twisted Metal’s debut season, a whole lot of hectic and violent mayhem surrounds the main characters John and Quiet, as partially caused by the nutso Sweet Tooth and his nonconsensual henchman Stu. In the end, the characters are mostly split up again, as John (and viewers) are made aware of an impending tournament set to show off the participants’ skills by way of vehicular combat, which is essentially the roots of the hugely popular video game franchise. It was quite the reveal, and a welcome one to balance the baffling twist that everything Anthony Mackie’s character went through was all for the sake of delivering a pint of ice cream. And then that was followed by Stephanie Beatriz’s thief being accosted by a woman claiming to be John’s sister, not to mention the post-credits scene and possible death.
All in all, Twisted Metal’s ending was a great way to set up a follow-up season, and when CinemaBlend talked with Stephanie Beatriz (as seen above), I asked how she felt about the way things wrapped up, and she seemed to be all in on wrapping up the story with a hook that leaves viewers wanting more. Connecting it back to her fandom of comics and graphic novels, she told me:
I think it's really cool. Especially since I think our hope is that people watch the whole series quickly, because I think you kind of get caught up in it. And then, you know, in the same way that when I was a teenager when I'd read a graphic novel, and I would get to that last panel, and I'd be like, 'Wait, there's no way they can wrap this up.' And you're sort of reading down the page and you know that you've got like two panels left, and then there's that 'To be continued...' And I think there's so many possibilities in this world, we've only seen a small section of it. We don't know what is at the end of the road, and so I'm excited to see how that gets flushed out, hopefully in another season of it.
I think we can all agree here that it would be a total gut punch straight from Joe Samoa's Sweet Tooth if this wound up being the only season we get from Twisted Metal. As Beatriz put it, the introduction of Calypso's tournament sets up future where anything could happen (at least within the loose logical standards of this batshit universe), considering the season largely stuck with Quiet and John's journey, and didn't fully explore the rest of the apocalypse-ravaged country. Not to mention the concept of digging more into John's actual family history, and learning about his sister.
I also had the pleasure of talking to Doughboys co-host Mike Mitchell about how much of a blast he had playing Stu, a character loosely adapted from the video game series. Throughout Twisted Metal, Stu starts out being a fairly terrible deputy to Thomas Haden Church's corrupt authority figure Agent Stone, alongside his best friend Mike (Tahj Vaughans). He then becomes an accomplice to Sweet Tooth, more out of survival necessity than anything, and while it seems like the season ends with Stu in a good place, the post-credits scene spins that assumption on its head.
As Mike and Stu are getting comfortable on the beach with a pair of fake ladies as companions, Sweet Tooth shows up out of nowhere and appears to slaughter the former while keeping Stu alive, presumably for being as minorly loyal as he was. Here's what Mike Mitchell told me about that scene, as well as working with pro wrestler Samoa Joe:
I spend a ton of time with Joe in the show, and I loved our pairing. Like a psychopath and a dummy kind of pairing up together, which was so fun. And it was so fun to play off that stuff and be with Joe. There's a cliffhanger at the end of the season, which I can talk about now, which is great. There's a cliffhanger at the end of the first season where Joe basically pulls me into the woods. He slashes up. Mike. I think. You know, we don't really see it happen. But he slashes up Mike, and I get yanked.
While the Birthday Boys co-founder did vaguely make it seems like Sweet Tooth might not have slaughtered Tahj Vaughan's character, I think it would take some wild explaining to reverse the massacre that was implied. And now we're left to think about the many, many, many sordid things that Sweet Tooth might do with Stu. He doesn't seem like the kind of monster who would treat Stu like one of those life-sized female dolls on the beach, but considering the villain still has a working knowledge of "Thong Song" lyrics, maybe I shouldn't assume anything about his libido. (Speaking of, check out what Samoa Joe told us about singing Sisquo's summer jam while filming.)
So for everyone like me who desperately wants to see what happens to these characters in a second season, I'd say make damned sure to snatch up a Peacock subscription, watch all ten episodes, and then tell everyone you know to do the same thing. Even though the WGA writers strike and SAG-AFTRA strike are currently making it difficult to forecast anything about the entertainment industry’s future, it’s possibly a perfect time to binge a show like this. Especially since it boasts 30-minute runtimes for all episodes, which is something I wish other shows would get behind.
While waiting to hear more about Twisted Metal's future, check out all the other upcoming video game adaptations that are heading to theaters and TV in the near-to-distant future.
