Some season finales tackle a big finish, bringing all the plot threads to a head simultaneously that strives to bring everything to a close in one, last, glorious episode; however, others serve to play as more of an epilogue, saving the razzmatazz for the previous installment in order to free itself up to lay seeds for a future season. It’s a risky play to shoot for that second choice for various reasons; but the most obvious one is that you may be sewing seeds for a season that may never actually happen. However, another reason I actually prefer a more closed off ending to a season (especially one as strong as Twisted Metal), is that epilogue episodes tend to be a bit of a downer, leaving you kind of bummed out when you should be punching the air in triumph as some kickass rock song plays you out triumphantly over the end credits. As you’ve probably guessed, the finale of Twisted Metal season 2 chooses to go with the more subdued option, but can it manage to whip up enough interest as to not suck all the fun out of the goofy carnage that came before it?
The Twisted Metal tournament has ended in a way that no one could have possibly forseen. The winner – completely by accident – is Stu; Quiet is crouching over John’s lifeless body; Sweet Tooth has been pounded into oblivion by the tournament’s secret, final boss, Minion and Calypso devilish whims have led to him bombing his own crowd, taking out all the Insiders in attendance. However, a strange prologue clues us in that Calypso – after emerging from that old well of his in Virginia in the year 1585 – has been at this for a very long time and once tried to pitch the concept of a Twisted Metal tv show to NBC during the early 2000s only to lose out to Friends. However, all the CEO trickster had to do was wait out the apocalypse to finally get his pet project off the ground and now that he’s finally done it, he couldn’t be happier.
However, this doesn’t help Stu much who finds out the hard way that Calypso’s winning wishes should come with health warnings as his desire to be somewhere safe with his recently killed friend, Mike, means that he wakes up on a space station orbiting the earth with only Mike’s corpse for company. Elsewhere, John manages to fare a little better after Quiet and Mayhem manage to restart his heart using a car battery and the trio flew the devastation, hoping to finally find John’s family cabin up north. Months pass and the trio have seemingly found peace thanks to their new family unit, the quiet of isolation and catch fish by shooting their guns repeatedly into the lake.
However, their idyllic retreat simply can’t last and a random TV broadcast fills them in on some worrying news. It seems that Calypso has framed them as anti-Insider terrorists for the stadium bombing and all the Mega-Cities have united to destroy the Outsiders once and for all. Worse yet, Calypso has got Minion back on-line and has sent his horny dreadnought to kill them – but when John discovers who Minion actually is, it lights a fire underneath him like never before.
So, sadly, the final episode of season 2 is something of a mess that hurriedly tries to scrape together a basic outline for a plot for a future season when we all probably would have been happier with a much simpler end. The episode’s scattershot focus not only robs us of a satisfying end, but leaves it’s characters in a state of random flux that will truly piss me off if Peacock doesn’t renew it. However, what’s even more frustrating is that a perfectly exceptable ending is right there within the episode as John, Quiet and Mayhem manage to actually find peace at John’s much hyped cabin and a simple broadcast from Calypso saying that they’re now all wanted terrorists would have been just fine.
However, from then, the show drops random twist after random twist in a way that doesn’t so much tease the next season, but batters you with plot points that probably would have been better off bring saved for the season it’s trying to tease. Minion still being alive is one thing and having the superwarrior suddenly attack them at the cabin is another; but then nailing us with the revelation that Minion is actually John’s sister, Dollface, reanimated into a laser shooting killing machine seems like the waste of a great twist. But wait, we aren’t done. One of the most nastily amusing aspects from the original games is that even if you won, Calypso would warp the winners wish into some sort of nightmare of monkey paw proportions and the fact that Stu technically gets his wish while getting royally screwed is virtually perfect; but the fact that the show manages to bring him back from space during the same episode feels yet again as if it would have played better if it was cliffhanger during season 3 and not splurged imeadiately in our faces.
On top of all this, we get further hints about Calypso’s origin, a mid-credit sting concerning Sweet Tooth being taken to meet his father, Charlie Kane and we even get a hint that Axel is still alive (called it), but after the whirlwind fun of the last couple of episodes, it almost feels like NUY3ARZ is almost an entirely different show to the missile firin’, tyre squealin’ death match that’s rocked my world over the last few weeks.
That’s not to say that Twisted Metal 2 has been a burnout – far from it. In fact, now only was it better than season 1, I don’t actually think I’ve watched any other show this year that’s been quite as much fun as this. I’ve genuinely come love the characters and when the show had an opportunity to really cut loose, the action has been genuinely thrilling. It’s just that the mechanics of ending a season while starting up interest for the next means that season 2s final bow feels more like prep for a future exam rather than a fun, carefree, blowout fans probably deserved.
I mean, there’s still laughs, action and some really well judged needledrops thanks to the genuis fishing with handguns bit, a nice callback to the babysitting book series that John got hooked on at the start of the series and a touching use of The Cranberries, but maybe John, Quiet and Mayhem deserved to have that well earned rest rather than being hurled back into the fray.
Of course, none of my issues will matter if the third season is announced and ultimately delivers, but the problem is that none of that is even remotely set in stone yet and the idea that yet another show could crash out with so many questions still on the table fills me with genuine anxiety.
Clumsy, ugly and weirdly undignified, this final episode does what it needs to do to move the story beyond the tournament, but from this day on, my brain has reconfigured the season to only have 11 episodes which ends on a cliffhanger while the 12th is more of an (extremely) early premier for a 3rd season that hasn’t even been ordered yet. Am I being too hard on it? Absolutely, but I’m not actually going to be cool with any of this until I get confirmation that John, Quiet, Mayhem and Sweet Tooth will be returning back to my screen – and even if they do, it’s still going to take about two damn years… I still love the show, I accept the what the episode is trying to achieve, but I’d gladly make a deal with Calypso himself if it meant I’d get season 3 within a calendar year.
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