In a time when all the classic slashers seem to be finding new leases of life, leading the pack us the defiant, shit-eating smirk of Chucky the killer doll as we head into his third season after an impressive switch to the small screen. Not only has the pint size perpetrator managed to keep a nearly unbroken string of continuity going since the 80s (impressively, not even the remake managed to throw it off), but it managed to juggle its huge amounts of backstory almost seamlessly with its newer characters, giving our unkillable villain nearly three generations of adversaries to battle with.
However, admittedly there were times in season 2 where even a seasoned Chuckyhead like me was worried that the show was playing a bit too much into the established past of the series as some episodes needed a PHD in the entire Child’s Play franchise to properly unlock all the fevered pleasures within.
Thankfully, creator Don Mancini seemingly agrees, as the opening of season 3 wipes the slate almost entirely clean by offering up an entirely new status quo – one that takes Chucky somewhere where no horror icon has been before. The motherfucking White House!
In the wake of the chaotic finale of season 2, we take something of a breath and instead focus mainly on the brand new cast of characters that Chucky has targeted this time round. In case you’ve been living in an anti-horror bubble or managed to skim over my intro (thanks for that), you’ll know that the giggling Good Guy doll hasn’t just set his sights on just any family – no, this time he’s managed to weasel himself into the bosom of the first family and has infiltrated the frickin’ White House.
President James Collins looks like he has a real shot at turning the entire country around after the events of recent years has split an entire nation. He’s young, he not affiliated with any political party thanks to being an independent candidate and his entire platform was based upon an unprecedented amount of transparency – however, the biggest issues he seems to have isnt coming from outside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, but from within. While wife, Charlotte, frets about making her mark while trying to redecorate and eldest son Grant thinks it’s hilarious to smoke weed in front of Nancy Reagan Just Say No posters in Tiktok posts, youngest son, Henry, lives something of an anxious existence thanks to his belief that the White House is haunted as fuck. The one thing that calms him down (other than a particularly kindly – and therefore doomed – secret service agent) is his bond with a sickeningly familiar Good Guy doll who calls himself Joseph, but as we all know, his real name is Charles.
Why exactly Chucky has decided to drop his previous missions of vengeance and anarchic invasions of Hackensack, New Jersey and instead ensconced himself within the main seat of power in the western world remains uncertain, but after sending a cryptic message to his old adversaries, Jake, Lexi and Devon, he obviously wants his latest showdown to take place on the largest stage of them all.
Acting as a pallet cleanser to all the crazy shit that ended season 2 (exorcisms, exploding priests, crossdressing rug pulls), some will no doubt be irked that Murder At 1600 not only refuses to answer a single, bloody one of them, but amusingly doesn’t even bother informing us how Chucky got his little, plastic ass into the White House in the first place. However, if there’s one thing Don Mancini loves to do with his series, it’s subvert the ever-loving shit out of every little thing he can get his eager mitts on and we’ve no doubt got a metric ton of drip-fed backstory coming down the pipe over the coming weeks. However, due to the strikes afflicting Hollywood at the time of writing, Chucky’s third season has been split into two halves with the second batch not dropping until sometime during 2024 which leads me to believe that the first batch of four episodes may stick to the White House stuff to begin with.
The largest hint at this is that the lead trio of Jake, Lexi and Devon (the returning Zackary Arthur, Alyvia Alyn Lind and Björgvin Arnarson respectively) are given relatively little screen time as the episode takes it’s time setting up this new, well, setting. Straight off the bat, Mancini’s script subverts expectations by having its president not be a thinly veiled parody of either the cartoonish pomposity of Donald Trump or the slurring, ancient Joe Biden, but instead has him be a virtuous man who genuinely could unite the country. While some may see this as something of a missed opportunity, Mancini seems to be content to riff on the concept of the absurdly idealistic movie Presidents you usually get in 90s movies like Independence Day or Air Force One.
Whether the show chooses to savagely tear into this trope as the story goes on will remain to be seen, but it’s given Devon Sawa yet another welcome role after racking up three different characters over two seasons (all dead, btw). In fact, one of the sweetest things about Chucky (the show, not the asshole doll) is that death doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t simply come back next season in a different role, so the American Horror Story vibes is continued by having Michael Therriault and Lara Jean Chorostecki return in new roles as the Vice President and the First Lady that’ll no doubt see them meet yet further, gruesome, demises.
Further adding to the palette cleanser feel if the episode is the use of Chucky himself, which feels more like the sparce, measure tone of Curse Of Chucky, rather than the in-your-face nature of some of the other sequels. Yes, the Chuckster makes a threatening phone call to his trio of nemeses and manages to messily blow the brains out of the security detail of young Henry (no doubt his latest target), but aside from that, the episode makes the most out of his inert, doll form as he sits just off to the side of numerous scenes, always watching and waiting like any good Child’s Play movie should.
A much needed and refreshing break from the tidal wave of continuity and returning characters that’s no doubt going to break soon, Murder At 1600 temporarily takes Chucky back to his roots while opening up a potentially juicy new world for him to screw with and the potential for this new season is limitless – imagine Chucky ringing up unfriendly foreign powers in order to trash talk them into World War III or, simpler yet, get his little, rubber fingertips on some nuclear launch codes and tell me the sky isn’t the limit.
Fans of the tangled continuity may find themselves itching for plot details (there’s not even the slightest hint of Tiffany, Andy Barclay, Nica Pierce or G.G.), but in its opening episode, Chucky delivers a deliberate, stripped back premier that competently sets the scene for the inevitable craziness to come.
Hail to the Chuck.
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