The Chucky Show has revisited one of horror’s most controversial sequels

The first season of chucky started plausibly independently. Although the concept and classic design of a killer doll voiced by Brad Dourif remains, the character is placed in a new setting with a new cast. Bullied gay middle school student Jake (Zackary Arthur) is the one who finds the vintage doll at a garage sale, and chaos ensues. It feels like a soft reboot of sorts, carefully weaving characters and other plot points from the previous seven films around the edges of Jake’s story.

The series’ recently concluded second season, however, has laid the groundwork and takes a much more direct approach to the franchise’s own story, choosing to tackle three decades of continuity and contrasting tones head-on. And it coalesces into one of the most compelling TV shows of 2022 – a hurricane meta-horror comedy that unpacks the history of the franchise while exploring our relationships with our parents with surprising maturity and nuance.

Still overseen by creator, writer, and sometimes director Don Mancini, the series has proven frighteningly malleable, constantly evolving to accommodate new cultural moments than its birth in the ’80s slasher boom made something more assertive and gave way to comedy. Its current form as a TV show is as emblematic of the era as any previous film, and the most shocking development of season two is how Mancini and his collaborators tackle some of the franchise’s most controversial parts. It may not always work, but it’s never less than fascinating to watch.

After the first season, the show transplants its surviving teenage trio of Jake, Devon (Björgvin Arnarson) and Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Lind) to a Catholic boarding school. Under the eyes of strict nuns and a smug headmaster, they find themselves in an unfamiliar environment, much like the 1991s child’s play 3 This film leaps forward in time to see Chucky’s nemesis Andy Barclay as a troubled teenager who has gone from the care of his single mother to various foster families and eventually to the military academy that serves as the film’s main setting.

child’s play 3 is a fairly dated film, notable for how harrowing its gun violence is set in front of the Columbine school today. To evolve over time, the successor of 1998 Chucky and his bride looks at the confident Scream and leans into comedy, giving Chucky a comedic foil in old flame Tiffany Valentine (Jennifer Tilly), who uses the book Voodoo for dummies. The film eschews the character of Andy Barclay and cranks up the absurdity, ending with Tiffany giving birth to an abrupt doll birth, the result of a quick “voodoo” pregnancy that followed her and Chucky’s earlier confirmation that they were both anatomically correct were and, uh, functional.

The next movie that follows this doll child, Seeds by Chucky, has long remained the most controversial of the franchises. Released in the paparazzi heyday of the early 2000s and South Park, the film marks Mancini’s directorial debut and is far more of a gross Hollywood meta-comedy than a traditional horror film. Treated separately as boy, Glen, from Chucky and girl, Glenda, from Tiffany, the child’s gender dysphoria manifests as distinct personalities. While Glen is shy and peaceful, Glenda embodies the horror character of the cross-dressing killer, albeit in a much more sympathetic light than other examples of the genre. The way the film resolves this plot point is complicated, to say the least. In the franchise’s boldest meta-casting stunt by far, the Tiffany character played by Jennifer Tilly possesses the body of an actress she adores: Jennifer Tilly. She then gives birth to red-haired twins who separately harbor the Glen personality and Glenda personality.

Until Chuckys second season, the franchise’s response to the mainstream rejection of Seeds by Chucky was to keep it in the background. The direct-to-DVD sequels of 2013 and 2017 Curse of Chucky and Cult of Chucky are essentially soft reboots prior to the TV series’ own soft reboot, taking a back-to-basics approach in which a Chucky doll threatens a new character, Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif), who he eventually owns. Tilly has a small role in the latter film, again adapted from Tiffany Valentine. Nica notes that Tiffany bears a striking resemblance to Jennifer Tilly; it’s a wink at the same time Seeds by Chucky Fans and a largely irrelevant, ignorable detail for those who either haven’t seen the film or don’t like its broad tonal finish. There is no reference to Glen or Glenda until the first season of chuckywhen the killer doll tells Jake he has a gender-biased child, he accepts because he’s “not a monster.”

In his determination to balance every aspect of the franchise, chucky don’t get off anymore Seeds by Chucky for a fun background reference. A significant portion of season two is devoted to how Tiffany has lived as long as Jennifer Tilly. Who takes care of their finances? Who answers your email? Are the cops suspicious? These questions (and more) that no one asked are belatedly and hilariously answered, culminating in an absolutely insane fourth episode devoted entirely to a detective story set in Tilly’s mansion, where the people who knew Tilly before possessed her was to intervene. Her sister Meg Tilly is there, as is her boyfriend Sutton Stracke from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills

. The same goes for popular actors Joe Pantoliano and Gina Gershon, who co-starred with Jennifer Tilly in the masterful backstory of The Wachowskis.matrix crime thriller Bound.

The crime thriller episode seems almost separate from the rest of the series, with no cuts in the Catholic School plot, which acts as the main storyline of the season. Chucky himself does not appear at all, except in hilarious bookend segments as the host, and the episode revisits fictional deaths in several non-fictional characters the likes of which have not been seen since Seeds by Chucky claimed the lives of Redman (who played herself) and Britney Spears (who didn’t). But most importantly, Glen and Glenda are reintroduced as non-binary adults, both played by Lachlan Watson. And as testified to by Watson’s performance as well as the series’ absurdist ambitions, Glen and Glenda become key figures for the rest of the series and its themes.

The increased visibility of queer narratives has been at the core of the development of the Child’s Play franchise. We see this metaphorically owned by Nica, who uses Chucky to resume his relationship with Tiffany. We see it too in the very first episode of the TV series, in the artistic Jake’s troubled relationship with his father, a struggling mechanic (Devon Sawa, who sports a large goatee) who is reluctant to view his son’s sexuality as anything but a phase accepted. Glen and Glenda’s return is a natural fit, allowing Mancini to reconsider the ending Seeds by Chucky.

In a 2019 essay for Little white lies, writes Sam Bodrojan: “Mancini offers the kind of poignant synopsis that countless ostensibly serious films about gender have failed to articulate. What vices and values ​​we develop differs from our parents, but must also be viewed in the context of them; Their relationship to our queerness may never quite match.” That’s perhaps the best way to see through it chucky

‘s exploration of Glen and Glenda and their mother’s decision to keep them in the dark about their true origins. They have never met their father and do not know that he is a killer doll. Little do they know that they themselves were once a single doll, and they have no idea that the woman who raised them is a separate person who possessed Jennifer Tilly’s body. To the world and to themselves, they are the Tilly twins. But the Tilly twins suffer from nightmares and an inescapable feeling that something is missing – the consequences of a parental choice that coincides with the common mistakes of adults throughout the series.

While Jake’s father seems more comfortable when sober, his intolerance escalates to verbal and physical abuse when intoxicated. In season two, Jake remarks that maybe one day they could have worked it out, but the opportunity will never arise: Chucky kills Jake’s father in the show’s first episode, hoping to trick Jake into murdering the kids, mocking him all alone. To the vulture, notes Louis Peitzman: “The show is both literally and subtextually about coming out, with Jake working hard to suppress his inner urges. The series connects Jake exploring his sexual identity with Jake exploring his killer instincts, but in a 2021 twist, it shows them both without the shame that traditionally colors metaphors like this.”

While none of the other adults are as overtly hostile as Jake’s father, they are little better. Jake stays with his uncle (also played by Devon Sawa, without a goatee), who relentlessly pushes his own son (Teo Briones) to run the track and make it to an Ivy League college. Jake’s friend Lexy has a frequent argument with her own mother (Barbara Alyn Woods), the city’s narcissistic ex-mayor. There are good parents, but they end up alongside the bad ones as part of Chucky’s ultimate goal of being the sole influential authority on the children’s lives. A positive adult character needs the opportunity to step in and take action, and although the kids encounter some, people like Chucky or even the Headmaster (Devon Sawa for the third time, now with big glasses) gain by being much more assertive in pursuing their goals.

Even if the second season is overflowing with all its ideas, characters and personalities, chucky is a show like no other. With incisive examinations of itself as a franchise and more pointed comments on queerness in our modern times, it takes an impressively consistent look at how children are shaped by the adults they grow up with, while remaining a hilariously fun time.

The first season of chucky can be viewed on Peacock. Season 2 is available to buy or rent digitally on Amazon, Apple, and Google Play.