I'll admit it: last year, I reviewed Chucky and I really missed the mark. Based on the first three episodes, I was deeply disappointed in the series and gave it a low rating. But I stuck with the show, and by the end of the season, I had changed my mind, and it was one of my favorite shows of the year. Season 2 only took about two minutes to grab me and totally get me hooked. In other words? I am all in on this season. Even though critics were only granted two episodes to watch, Chucky Season 2 is already shaping up to be great — full of laugh, love, insanity, and plenty of blood.
We pick up immediately where Season 1 ended, with Andy (Alex Vincent) driving the truck full of Chucky (Brad Dourif) dolls away from the hospital. There is some great banter between a few of the dolls in the truck, and Andy drives it over a cliff. But not all of the Chucky dolls die…
Jake (Zackary Arthur) gets a foster family with stern parents who don’t approve of him being gay, but he has an adorable, doting younger foster brother, Gary, who is obsessed with being the Robin to his Batman. He moves two hours away, putting a strain on his relationship with Devon (Bjorgvin Arnarson), but they still fight to make it work.
Six months after the end of Season 1, it’s Halloween, and Jake has to cancel plans to hang out with Devon in order to take Gary trick-or-treating. But then the weird phone calls start — first wrong numbers, then horrible prank calls, then a video call, coming from Lexy’s (Alyvia Alyn Lind) house. The two-foot-high perspective of the camera is a dead giveaway for who it is, and Devon and Jake work together to call the cops to Lexy’s house until they can get there. The cops find nothing, but Lexy is concerned.
Devon and Jake show up, and while Lexy is happy to see them, they are all immediately concerned. Was that Chucky in the house? Was it perhaps the Wedding Belle doll that Caroline’s therapist gave her — one that bears more than a striking resemblance to Tiffany? Tragedy strikes (redacted for spoiler content), and Lexy, Devon, and Jake are sent to a Catholic boarding school instead of juvie. But guess who follows them there…?
I'm kind of enjoying the fact that the show is just down to Devon, Jake, and Lexy for our main three characters. In the first season, there were so many kids that it was hard to care about them all. This shift makes the story feel more intimate and more focused. It'll be hard not to miss Caroline, though. I love her awkward, on-the-spectrum personality and identify with it way too much. Devon and Jake have really grown since last season. It feels like they are getting more comfortable being who they are. Lexy seems to have gone in the opposite direction, resorting to snorting crushed-up clonazepam (as well as who knows what else). However, they have all become really close friends, no longer sniping at one another. Trauma really bonds people together, and it is no exception for these three. Out of the two episodes critics were given for viewing, only one of them revolved around the kids at the Catholic school, so who knows what kind of religious horrors we might get out of that? So far, it just seems like standard everyday horrors, but I expect the producers to pull some delicious shock and awe.
We do meet a new kid, Nadine (Bella Higginbotham), who is Lexy’s roommate. She is a seemingly innocuous kid, and I have the sneaking sense that we will discover has a deeper, darker secret than just kleptomania – which already gets her and Lexy into trouble. Meanwhile, Jake and Devon are made roommates, which I suspect is going to get them into trouble with the nuns, as well as eventually put a strain on their relationship – they are too young to be living together! On the other side of things, Jennifer Tilly is still being joyously insane playing herself/Tiffany and holding Nica (Fiona Dourif) captive. Nica, in the meantime, has something of a truce going on with the Chucky in her head, if only to use him to get free. So far, it hasn’t worked. We will get to meet Tiffany’s twins, Glen and Glenda, played by Lachlan Watson (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) at some point. A tease at the end of the second episode, which cuts to a brief shot of a car with a license plate that reads THEY/THEM, means they're definitely on deck to appear sooner rather than later.
Chucky is just a delight. It really is. This show is fun. And I hope that this review makes up for my less-than-stellar review first season. For that, I am truly sorry and am willing to admit the error of my ways.
Rating: A+
Chucky Season 2 premieres October 5 on SYFY and USA.