The Peacock post-apocalyptic action comedy series, Twisted Metal, continues its 2nd season this week, with two more episodes filled with action and a slight tinge of drama, as we seemingly witness the death of a major character. After John Doe’s reunion with his lover, Quiet, and his long-lost sister, Krysta, the group had decided to enter the Twisted Metal death race tournament being organized by Calypso, and we had also seen the commencement of this deadly competition, as the preliminary round began. Season 2 episodes 6 and 7 also feature the competitors officially putting in their wishes, which they are fighting for in the race, and then another exciting round of the tournament.
Spoiler Alert
Is Dollface dead?
In season 2 episode 5, the preliminary round of Calypso’s twisted metal tournament had been flagged off, with each of the competitors given a package to deliver to a specified location at the end of an adventure-filled ride. During this ride, all the competitors were allowed to attack one another and to eliminate each other through murder, as that would increase one’s chances of winning the tournament. The package also had to be kept safe, and its integrity maintained, the failure of which would automatically launch missiles targeting the competitor’s vehicle and kill them as a sort of punishment for wrecking Calypso’s important delivery package. As the round began, a driver was immediately shot and killed, much to the benefit of Mayhem, who took over their car, as her own had been sabotaged by Quiet earlier. At the very end of the episode, Mayhem was seen to be in immense trouble, as Chuckie Floop kept attacking her, and John and Quiet even intervened to help her.
At the beginning of episode 6, John and Quiet help Mayhem survive the repeated attacks, first by Chuckie Floop and then by Billy Ray Stillwell, with Quiet even killing Billy with a well-aimed ax to his head. They manage to protect Mayhem, while Raven crosses the line and finishes the course by safely depositing the package to Calypso’s men. With more and more cars now crossing the line and advancing to the main tournament, John and Quiet need to step up their game, and so they ask Krysta to execute the plan that they had earlier made. While Mayhem, John, and Quiet would drive towards the finish line, Krysta would round up the rest of the competitors behind her and use the EMP grenade stolen from Diesel City earlier to disable all their vehicles and ensure that a significant number of racers were eliminated from the tournament.
It was only to execute this plan that Krysta had entered the tournament in the first place, as she’d always been driven by the desire to ensure that Quiet’s wish, of the eradication of all walls making the cities inaccessible to outsiders, was fulfilled. After all, Quiet’s wish was completely in line with the demands of the Dolls, the group that Krysta led as Dollface. However, all her plans at present go wrong when the EMP grenade does not go off when she tries to use it, and the button signifies some kind of malfunction. As a result, the distracted Krysta is first attacked by Mr. Grimm, and she is hit in the face, resulting in her removing her Dollface mask for better visibility and concentration. But soon, she gets struck by a metal harpoon thrown by another group of competitors, and Krysta falls to the ground.
Sadly, all her friends are much ahead in the race, with John and Quiet crossing the finish line around this moment, and so Krysta knows that there is no way for her to survive. Even in the final moments of her life, she thinks of her brother and her friend, because of which Krysta decides to sacrifice herself along with her killers so that they cannot survive to fight in the next round either. She shoots her package and destroys it intentionally, so that a missile is launched to eliminate her, and since her attackers are standing right next to her, they also get killed by the missile.
Thus, pretty early into season 2 episode 6, Krysta dies, and her ATV slowly rolls past the finishing line. Since the vehicle is empty, but the Dollface mask is dangling from one of the handlebars, it is evident to everyone, including John, Quiet, and Mayhem, that Krysta has passed away in the preliminary round of the tournament. However, we do not actually see Krysta die, or even her dead body, which might mean that there is still a possibility that she has somehow survived and that she will return to help her friends and brother. The fact that her ATV does cross the line, along with her iconic mask, might also be technically used to state that Dollface can continue the race later on, if she is indeed alive.
Why is Calypso organizing the tournament?
As the competitors clearing the preliminary round are announced as the official entrants to the tournament and are taken to a predetermined place of accommodation, more details about the nature of the Twisted Metal tournament are revealed. Despite being a competition involving death races in which people are allowed to literally kill each other, it does ironically have a set of rules and even allotted accommodations and modes of transport. For example, the vicious and violent racers are all cooped up inside a small bus to be taken to their hotel, despite them having vehicles of their own that would have been adequate for the short journey. While this is mostly done for comedic effect, this sort of official nature given to the tournament is also indicative of the kind of person Calypso is and why he is organizing such a tournament.
Calypso clearly wants to exert control over the tournament and to have people abide by rules that he has come up with. He has a desire to control chaos, and this is why he has created rules for such an apparently lawless tournament and its rowdy competitors. Calypso reminds everyone that, in spite of the nature of his tournament, they are not outlanders who can do just about anything whenever they want, but that they are technically under the civil and moral codes that exist within the walled cities. Although the fighting and killing is allowed during the different rounds of the tournament, the racers cannot kill each other during downtime, and doing so will immediately eliminate them and probably even lead to their death. According to Calypso, this rule will ensure that the fine line between the racers and any random outsider who raids and kills to survive will be maintained at all times.
Interestingly, somewhat of a backstory is also provided about Calypso through a scene from the past when John Doe had come across him for the very first time. John was working as a milkman at the time, making deliveries for people to earn his living, and during one of his runs, he had made a stop for the night at a desolate place. This is where he met Calypso for the first time, whom he knew as a self-obsessed man who kept graffitiing his own name on every wall in the area. From this encounter, which is now presented at the very beginning of season 2 episode 6, it is evident that Calypso has had the ability to grant wishes for everyone for a very long time, probably since his childhood. He too knew how special this ability made him, and therefore, Calypso always yearned to be famous and respected, which is why he expected John to know who he was, which was definitely not the case.
Therefore, he had used his abilities to leave cans of beer for John, knowing well that he would always remember this magical interaction and also probably tell others about him. Calypso’s desire to be known and revered has only grown from then on, with him now organizing the Twisted Metal tournament clearly to spread awareness about himself. He wants people to not just know him as the granter of all wishes but also as a wealthy and influential creative man, who can easily plan and execute a death race tournament of such a grand scale.
What do John and Quiet wish for?
Before the next round of the tournament begins, Calypso asks each of the competing teams to turn in their wishes privately so that he knows what they are participating in the tournament for. The competitors are told to enter a room one by one, inside which there is a wishing well, with coins kept by the side, and they are to speak out their wishes after dropping a coin in the well. But there is a catch in the situation, in the sense that each competing team is allowed one wish, meaning that if there are multiple individuals in a particular team, then they have to decide on just one wish and lock it in with Calypso.
This is where things go wrong for the protagonist, as John ends up making a wish of his own, almost impulsively. Quiet had always been clear about how she wanted the eradication of all walls, and therefore all social divide, if she won the tournament, and as John lets her make the wish in front of the wishing well, Quiet says just what she had planned. Significantly, the couple had carried Kristy’s Dollface mask with them into the wishing room, and they initially forgot to pick it back up while leaving. As John notices it and goes back to fetch it, he suddenly now gets the room to himself, and standing in front of the well, he cannot help but make his own wish.
John naturally wishes to bring Krysta back to life, for he had already grown very close to his elder sister, despite not having been in touch with her for most of his life. But his wish creates a massive problem, which will surely come into play towards the end of Twisted Metal season 2, as his team now has two wishes made, which is not permitted according to the rules of the game. If he wants, Calypso can choose to turn down both their wishes, stating that they had already broken the law, even if they ultimately win the tournament. After all, Calypso is known for granting misleading wishes in the Twisted Metal video games, which end up hurting the one making the wish more than they could have imagined.
Can Mayhem continue in the race?
The next round of the race plays out over the span of Twisted Metal season 2 episode 7, in which the drivers have to enter a specific area, inside which eight exit passes have been hidden inside buildings. As the number of competitors is way more than eight, there will be a ruthless battle once again in order to get hold of the crucial passes. Any competitor attempting to leave the area without a pass will be instantly killed at the finish line. Therefore, the cruel games begin once again, with Mayhem once more having a run-in with Chuckie Floop. The buildings that contain the exit passes have been marked with red smoke on the roofs so that the drivers can identify them and leave their vehicles outside to go fetch the items on foot. As fate would have it, Mayhem finds a building with the pass and runs in to finish the round, only to find that Chuckie has already got hold of it.
As is characteristic of him, Chuckie patronizes Mayhem and treats her as a joke simply because of her young age, and thus a fistfight breaks out. But rather unexpectedly, Mayhem is revealed to be actually quite good in a fight, and she manages to push Chuckie out of the window of the building, not only getting hold of the pass in the process, but also killing him. The man falls on the roof of the car that Mayhem had been using, and it is totaled, meaning that Mayhem has to now use Chuckie Floop’s car to exit the area and continue in the tournament. Despite initially hating the idea, she quickly falls in love with the car, which has a kind of inbuilt AI assistant, which can easily navigate the car by itself.
The other major competitors also manage to complete the round, including Raven, who is revealed to have some kind of shared past with Calypso. Although the details of this past are not provided yet, we can expect more information in the episodes to come. Axel and Vermin also complete the round with apparent ease, as we do not see them in action. Meanwhile, Mr. Grimm manages to find a loophole in the rules and crosses the finishing line without an exit pass by simply riding his motorbike into the ice-cream truck driven by Sweet Tooth and Stu. With every passing minute, Stu is also gradually realizing how he is totally not fit to be riding around with a murderous and emotionally unstable clown, with him clearly wanting to reunite with his old friend, Mike. This too can be expected to develop into a subplot in the episodes to come, and it will be interesting to watch how Sweet Tooth reacts.
Do John and Quiet manage to survive the first round?
As John and Quiet had finished the preliminary round in dead last position, they are now given a special head start by Calypso in the first round, as the couple are given a tracker to each of the eight passes and also allowed to start the course a minute before everyone else. But despite this advantage, they are unable to make use of the chance, solely because of the fact that John just cannot concentrate on the task at hand. John actually keeps feeling guilty about how he had lied to Quiet, or rather, about how he has been keeping the truth from her, about the wish that he had secretly made behind her back.
Thus, as John remains busy with this thought, he messes up first as a driver and then as a navigator, making the couple survive the first round only out of sheer luck. They manage to take down the Holy Men, without actually planning on doing so, and get hold of the last pass, along with rescuing the baby boy, who is supposedly the reincarnation of Preacher. While they do survive the round, Quiet admits to John that they need to perform better in the competition, and this is when the protagonist ultimately confesses that he has secretly made a different wish. We do not see Quiet’s reaction yet, as the episode ends, but a dramatic falling out between the two, or at least an argument, can surely be expected.
