After two episodes of presidential carnage that’s seen more blood hit the floor of the Oval Office than overtime at a slaughter house, the good people behind Chucky obviously felt that it was long past time to dive back into the coiled, continuing continuity that the Child’s Play franchise has dutifully honoured since its first outing. However, depending on your level of Chucky fandom, this could prove to be something of a double-edged blade with the latter half of season two proving to be prime evidence. While someone who has followed the franchise from the start, the merging of all the surviving cast of Chucky’s various eras was something of a goldmine with OG old schoolers Andy and Kyle not only rubbing shoulders with the trio of new kids, but also interacting with characters from Bride, Seed, Curse and Cult too. However, if you had missed just one previous installment, the critical mass of callbacks might have been way too much to follow and you were probably wondering why we couldn’t just have Chucky killing people like normal. Well, if you’re in the latter camp, brace yourselves, because we’re about to tie up a hell of a lot of loose ends – however, if you’re a die hard member of the Child’s Play faithful, prepare for yet another nexus point for the entire franchise.
Turning back the clock to the bloody events of last January, Episode 3 strives to fill in the blanks between last season’s shocking (and admittedly confusing) reveal and Chucky resurfacing at the White House and we start right at the moment we find out that Caroline’s (Lexi’s sister) Wedding Belle doll was actually the final Chucky doll disguised in drag. However, as he lunges at ascreaming Tiffany (still in Jennifer Tilly’s body) with vengence in mind, the police arrive to arrest the helium-voiced femme fatal and so Chucky cuts his losses, goes limp and later escapes with Caroline who seems to have utterly bought into the whole “friend to the end” thing and is entirely comfortable with the doll’s murderous ways. However, as they escape, Nica Pierce – who is still understandably obsessed with killing Tiffany after over a small matter of her quadruple amputation – attempts to stop them, giving chase with her wheelchair and prosthetic arms only to lose them thanks to the New York subway not being handicapable.
As the year goes on, Chucky and Caroline’s bond strengthens, but to Chucky’s horror he awakens one day to find that hes visibly aged, sporting crow’s feet and weathered hands. It seems that the voodoo god who gave Chucky the power to shift his soul has abandoned the former Charles Lee Ray due to the matter of the killer getting entwined with Christian magic after his little exorcism last year. If Chucky doesn’t make six sacrifices in a place of unimaginable evil, he’ll continue to age out, trapped in his little doll body.
Meanwhile, Zack, Devon, Lexi and Nica look on as their damning testimonies helps Tiffany side-step her hoped for insanity plea and instead gives her an all-star pass straight to getting a lethal injection, although Lexi still can’t prise the location if her sister out of a woman who insists on wearing stiletto heels in prison.
It all culminates when, after a false start, Chucky locks on to getting back into Damballa’s good graces when Caroline is the one who figures out how to lump the desperate doll in either the First Family.
So, while I’ve touched upon the potential dangers of leaning too heavily on complex, franchise history, I have to admit I fucking love it when Chucky delves deeply into its greater universe because it usually tackles such affairs with an admirably balanced hand and Jennifer’s Body ends up being possibly the most balanced one yet. For a start, it unravels the rather confusing cliffhanger ending that saw that the absolute, last, final Good Guy doll ever had been hiding in plain sight by going all To Wong Foo and disguising himself as Caroline’s female doll. Even for a franchise about a killer doll that’s gone from serious to meta and back again, it was many too ridiculous even for this loyal fan to swallow, but the episode’s job seems to be to troubleshoot some of the weirder or underused threads back into line. This is most evident when it comes to the story arc of Caroline that’s been barely ticking over since the show first started back in 2021 and it’s great to finally see it pay off all these years later – in fact, Caroline ends up proving to be maybe Chucky’s most intriguing protege yet. Hardly as openly troubled as a younger Zack when we first met him or even the emotionally closed off, whining, Junior, Caroline is instead a cool, calm customer who asbtains from killing, yet seems to genuinely care about her psychotic friend to the end, reading Voodoo For Dummies cover to cover and monitoring the doll’s health in order to help him be the best killer he can be. What is more fascinating is that Chucky seems to reciprocate this affection (aside from a slight wobble when he tries to sneakily transfer his soul into her when he first discovers his fate) and he honestlyvseens to appreciate having a facilitator in his crimes who almost acts like a caring personal assistant rather than a child possibly suffering from severe Stockholm Syndrome.
In fact, their disturbingly adorable double act could easily sustained an entire episode as it seems to contain a huge amount of potential with the staggeringly grisly murder of a taxi driver (a cameoing Kenan Thompson) by the insertion of an umbella into his throat (you best believe that Chucky opens it, too), a magnificently quirky visit to a very modern witch doctor’s office and even a murderous trip to the Amityville house, proving to be great fun. They even squeeze a cameo for Andy Barclay actor Alex Vincent in there as Chucky finally catches and kills his longest surviving nemesis by stabbing him repeatedly in the face, but this only proves to be a cheeky, rug-pulling, dream sequence as Chucky snoozes.
Elsewhere, a returning Jennifer Tilly returns to once again outright steal the entire episode from everyone as she attends court dressed like Jessica Rabbit, defends the practicality of wearing heels in prison and magnificently chews the scenery at any given opportunity, bit while it’s always a treat to see here resplendent overacting on Chucky, for once, the central tale of the Chuckster crapping his dungarees because he’s finally aging, manages to hold it’s own.
Belatedly dealing with the messy fallout of season 2 in a way that’s gory, surprising and so satisfyingly neat, you could quite easily finish the remainder of the season without the need to revisit anyone except the main players.
So it’s back to the White House with the next episode, but it’s nice to see Chucky getting its affairs in order before it’s big, mid-season blowout.
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