Summary
Twisted Metal Season 2 delivers its first major character death in Episode 6, and it’s an unexpected one, effectively amping up the drama.
Killing off major characters is often seen as a pretty cheap way of farming audience engagement. Game of Thrones popularized the practice with the insane internet-breaking virality of “The Red Wedding”, and you can scarcely tune into a show these days without the trick being emulated, often to mixed effect. Surprisingly, Twisted Metal pulls it off pretty well. Episode 6’s unceremonious offing of an interesting and important new character easily constitutes the biggest moment of Season 2 thus far, and will also, in a roundabout way, redefine John’s relationship with Quiet.
That’s the kind of sudden — and hopefully permanent, though perhaps not — kind of development you want in a series like this. It raises the stakes. Despite the lightweight tone, it implies real consequences. And it also puts a marker down, implying that none of these characters, even your favourites, are necessarily safe. Dollface wasn’t just fresh for this season but was also integral to John’s character arc and past. And now, seemingly, she isn’t.
You’ll notice I’m slightly unwilling to commit to the idea of Dollface being totally gone, blown to bits in a noble self-sacrifice after being skewered by some other racers so unremarkable that I didn’t even catch their names. This is because of the cold open and ending of this episode making some pretty strong implications about potential supernaturalism that may well come to undermine all of this in due time. In the opening scene, John’s initial flashback meeting with Calypso seems to make his magical powers much less ambiguous than Mr. Grimm’s, which were deliberately questioned. And the ending — which we’ll get to in a minute — at least floats the possibility of a resurrection.
What’s weird about Dollface having been killed off, even if it’s only temporarily, is that Twisted Metal Season 2 has largely been structured around her relationship with John. Mayhem seems to have been introduced to give Quiet someone to talk to while John was getting to know his sister. But now, despite Episode 6 having picked up from where the previous installment left off with John and Quiet rescuing Mayhem, Dollface is no longer around, seemingly invalidating the need for Mayhem. And I hope that doesn’t have any significant repercussions, since Mayhem is my favourite character by far.
To be fair, the tournament structure overall may be enough to carry the remaining episodes. The opening qualifier is followed by orientation, with the racers all being moved into a high school, where tensions between them threaten to boil over. The tournament has multiple unique rounds, each harder than the last, and the final survivor gets their wish granted, no questions asked. But killing anyone outside of an official round will result in immediate disqualification.
This massively changes the status quo, since all of these eccentric characters who have previously only met in passing — and even then at high speed — are now all under one roof. Quiet will have plenty of people to talk to, even if some of them she’d rather avoid. However, the climax suggests that one of those people may end up being John, whose sudden grief over Dollface causes him to make a potentially ill-advised decision that constitutes a minor — or major, depending on your perspective — betrayal.
It’s about the wishes. The wishes are all made in advance, and crucially, only one is allowed per car, not per driver. This means that John and Quiet only get the one. This shouldn’t be a problem since they’ve both already agreed that they desire the walls between Insiders and Outsiders to disappear. But that was before Dollface’s death. Now, John has other concerns. So, after making his wish with Quiet, he lingers behind and makes another wish of his own — he wishes for his sister to come back to life.
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