Chucky, the killer doll, is renowned far and wide for his ability to come back from virtually any set back. Burnt alive? No sweat. Shot through the heart? A minor inconvenience. Blown up like a balloon? Oh please!
However, one of his most impressive ressurections has to be that not even the actor’s strike could keep him down for long and after a brief hiatus, Chucky Season 3 finally returns to the White House to pay off that outlandish cliffhanger. But has this gap of nearly six months managed to throw the plastic pestilence off his game and rerailed the momentum the season had so far, or does the show come back with renewed resilience?
With a ton of back story to remind ourselves of and a whole new wrinkle in Chucky’s persona to introduce, can the funnest horror show on the block carry on as if nothing has happened?
After decades of rampages, Chucky, with his connection to voodoo god Damballa severed, is finally dying and he certainly now looks his age. Withered and weak, his little plastic form is a shell of its former glory and even the random poisoning of a White House maid isn’t enough to raise his spirits. It seems like the end is finally in sight for Charles Lee Ray, and while the demented doll finally contemplates his mortality, the cast of characters who orbit him try to move on after the Halloween night tragedy that saw a bunch of people crushed to death by a falling chandelier.
Lexi, still hoping to discover the whereabouts of her missing sister, attempts to smooths things over with the betrayed First Son, Grant Collins, while Jake and Devon discover Chucky’s failing health from that paranormal physician from a couple of episodes ago, and vow to find a way to finish of his soul for good.
Meanwhile President Collins is having some sanity issues as he’s having more and more visions of his dead son Joseph, but while the First Lady, Charlotte worries about his mental health, she sort of has to carry some of the blame as she and creepy Agent Pryce have been covering up all of Chucky’s subsequent victims in an effort to “control the narrative” despite having no clue about what is actually going on.
However, there may actually be something to the visions that the President has been having, because his other, other son, Henry, has been having them too, and soon everyone is spotting what seems to be the ghosts of Chucky’s most recent victims all over the place.
Meanwhile, Chucky may be down, but he’s not out yet and after a pep talk from Tiffany as she makes the best of being on death row, the world’s baddest Good Guy vows to go out with a bang that will take us all with him.
Wild, wacky and wilfully weird, having Chucky back on the box is always a good thing and while the belated fifth episode of the stalled third season is kind of stuck a little playing catch up, it soon manages to get up to speed and set the course for the final three episodes.
The lead story here, however, is Chucky and his ravaged, wrinkled and withering body and true to form, Chucky creator Don Mancini can’t resist throwing in a bunch of “old” jokes as the killer struggles to adapt to his decrepit state. Sure, he still has the moxy to put a fatal amount of bleach in the drinking flask of a passing maid, but the spark’s gone, and the act of finally facing death – for good this time – has even left a random poisoning lacking that old thrill. During the span of the entire show, Chucky’s writers have been coming up with ever more outlandish personas for the titular doll to take in order to mix things up that’s ranged from a Chucky that’s actually turned good, to one that’s become a crazed general à la Apocalypse Now – but this old version hits a little different as it’s a state of being that Chucky has defiantly fought against it since the moment he first got shot back in the 80s. Watching him complain about not bring able to get it up anymore (he means his knifing arm) is fun, as is the sight of him watching other doll movies such as M3GAN and getting enraged that the Blumhouse pretender has stolen his moves (“Fuck you M-three-gan!”), and this current variant of him may be one of the best yet.
However, while we explore sudden old age with our aging anti-hero, everyone else is scurrying around as usual locked within their own plots and while the growing relationship between Lexi and Grant merely burns up time, Jake and Devon’s relationship gets taken up a notch as they take time out from Chunky hunting to finally sleep together (to the unsubtle sounds of “Relax” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, no less). But while this is a milestone in their coupling, the cracks are now becoming widely apparent because while Jake is wildly enthused and claims he feels like a whole new person, Devon seems less convinced and even suggests that they abandon their quest for vengence against Chucky. Elsewhere, the continuing conspiracy plot involving Charlotte Colin’s and Agent Pryce continues to chase its tail, but a move into the realms of the supernatural (the show is strongly hinting that the White House is more haunted than an Indian burial ground) finally means that this errant thread is finally starting to be just more than a convenient device to explain Chucky’s bodies getting hidden.
While the sheer amount of dangling plot threads thankfully continues to preclude any mention of the still-surviving legacy characters (we really do need a break from the whole Andy/Nica/Glen thing), we still have time to call in to the always fabulous Tiffany who, despite being on death row, has found a way to make half the guards her own personal bitch with some voodoo dolls and its here that the second half of Season 3 finally gets its direction. With both Tiffany and Chucky facing death, the Dell’s erstwhile boo suggests going out in a blaze of glory and taking as many people with him as he can. Of course, Chucky being Chucky takes it literally and in a truly shocking moment, gorily does away with President Collins by gouging the eyes out of his screaming head and making a bee-line for the US Nuke codes!
While we kinda knew that the Chuckster was going to make a play for mutually assured destruction sooner or later, the stunning moment where Devon Sawa endures his fourth death of the series literally comes out of nowhere and even though I’ve got a feeling he’ll return as a ghost in later episodes, it’s still a sight to behold.
I mean, sure. Freddy, Jason and Michael have racked up some serious kills in their careers, but none of those guys have managed to take out the fucking POTUS! It’s not like Chucky hasn’t returned before, but season 3 has raised the stakes like never before.
Hail to the Chuck!
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