Spoiler Alert: This story contains spoilers for “Chucky Actually,” the Season 2 finale of “Chucky” on Syfy and USA Network.
‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, Chucky was using a chainsaw to bisect the mayor right through her blouse.
In the Season 2 finale of “Chucky,” the joyfully murderous doll chose Christmas Eve to reveal he wasn’t dead after the exorcism in last week’s penultimate episode. But did anyone really believe the Power of Christ would be that compelling to him?
After transferring himself into a secret Good Guy doll hidden by his now-dead accomplice Dr. Mixter (Rosemary Dunsmore), Chucky finally made his move on those meddling kids Jake (Zackary Arthur), Devon (Björgvin Arnarson) and Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Lind).
While Chucky is most associated with Halloween, which is where Season 2 began, creator Don Mancini seized the chance to bookend the season with some Yuletide cheer from the world’s worst toy.
“Just as Tiffany’s favorite color is diamonds, Chucky’s favorite color is blood,” he told Variety. “Blood and green. He’s perfect for Christmas, and getting to deck the halls with blood — specifically Mayor Michelle’s blood — was perfect for the show.”
That particularly unfortunate victim, played by Barbara Alyn Woods, was the last parent standing for the teenage trio at the center of the show — that is, before Chucky decorated the nearby Christmas tree with her. But the now-orphaned kids didn’t watch passively as Chucky and Tiffany (still in Jennifer Tilly’s body) ruined Christmas. For the first time, they struck back, as Jake stabbed Tiffany and the three of them very nearly trapped her.
Arthur says Jake’s journey this season has largely been defined by the guilt he felt over Chucky blowing up his foster brother in the premiere. He clung to the possibility of redemption, which led him to believe in the possibility of a Good Chucky. But with those hopes dashed, and with few people left alive, Jake reverts back to the darker instincts Chucky preyed upon in Season 1.
“He does kind of turn, not murderous, but a little evil when he stabs Tiffany,” Arthur says. “This is the first time we have seen these kids commit violent acts against other people. Considering everything that has happened, it is not a leap to think Jake, Devon and Lexy could go down a dark path.”
By the end of the episode, they do find some solace in the return of Miss Fairchild (Annie M. Briggs), their teacher previously blamed for Chucky’s murders. While joyous, Arthur notes Miss F is a reminder of just how few people are still standing.
“The kids kind of fall into her arms, and it just goes to show they really have nobody else to trust,” he says. “In Miss F, they feel this is someone they can trust and that’s new for them.”
Mancini says their confrontation with Tiffany — who is ultimately saved by Caroline, Lexy’s little sister and Chucky’s new accomplice — will be key to aligning the TV series’ teen heroes with the film franchise’s legacy characters, Andy (Alex Vincent) and Kyle (Christine Elise), should the show get renewed for Season 3.
“It’s meant to be cathartic in a way,” he says. “These kids have taken so much from these characters and been manipulated, and I just think it was important to have that moment of violence committed by them toward the enemy. Moving forward, they join Andy and Kyle in the ranks of the cavalry that has to come to the rescue.”
Speaking of those battle-hardened members of the Chucky Survivors Support Group, Mancini said the final moments of Episode 7, which saw Andy and Kyle bask in the belief Chucky was finally dead (intercut with real footage of them as innocent kids in 1990’s “Child’s Play 2”), wasn’t necessarily meant to release them from Chucky’s reign of terror.
“Are they going off into that well-earned sunset, or are they right back where they started?” he asks with a smile.
With Chucky’s resurrection never really in doubt, the finale’s biggest twist was the true identity of Belle, the doll Caroline has been caring for all season. Tiffany had intended to steal the doll and use it as her vessel to return to doll form, only to learn it was just another Chucky doll in drag. The bait-and-switch reveal was Chucky’s reminder to his enemies — and the audience —that he hasn’t lost his touch 30 years into his franchise.
“What we saw with that finale revelation — that the Belle doll was Chucky all along in drag — is that Chucky is smarter than everyone on the board,” Mancini says. “Chucky made provisions for everything, and one of my intentions was to again show what a formidable opponent he is. In a way, we leave off the season with him saying, ‘Come and get me.’ The kids, Tiffany, Dr. Mixter, everyone who deigned to think they got the better of Chucky, lost.”
The divide over how to deal with Chucky’s many recent manifestations — Chucky Prime, Good Chucky and Hulk Chucky — nearly cost Jake and Devon their relationship, as did navigating the equally hostile halls of their new Catholic School. But in the finale, they resolved their tensions in the spirit of Christmas, something Arthur says is a testament to their future strength.
“We have seen them grow and maintain a relationship, partly because they have had a horrible shared experience,” he says. “But they really do care for each other, and I think their relationship will continue to thrive amidst the chaos.”
But they weren’t the only ones reuniting.
After being put in human twin bodies in the “Seed of Chucky” movie, Glen and Glenda were returned to their single doll body with the help of their mother Tiffany, whom they informed they will now identify as GG.
Mancini says GG was the show’s way to honor the trans experience — “through our wackadoodle Chucky horror genre lens, of course.”
“The idea here is that GG didn’t need two bodies or two vehicles for expression,” he says. “Every aspect of this entity is valid — masculine, feminine, violent, pacifist. Like all of us, a universe is going on within this one entity.”
Once Tiffany knew her children were safe, she made her desperate play to join them in doll form by stealing Caroline’s Belle doll, which was thwarted by Chucky’s reveal and put her in the crosshairs of a vengeful (and recently de-Chucky-ed) Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif).
For a moment, fans might have started to sweat thinking Tiffany would actually shed her Jennifer Tilly host, putting an end to Tilly’s two-decade tenure in the franchise, since her own spirit — which had been imprisoned in Tiffany’s old doll body for 20 years — had been turned to roadkill in the previous episode. Luckily, Mancini says he has no plans to dispatch Tilly, the Oscar-nominated actor and her in-universe body.
“I want my friend, the actress Jennifer Tilly, to be in the franchise as long as she wants to do it,” he says.
If Tilly’s universal love for the cast and crew on social media is any indication, it looks like she’s willing to be the gift that keeps on giving.
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