Twisted Metal season 2 is set to premiere on July 31, and based on the trailer, it appears the Peacock show will finally be taking its in-game premise of a demolition derby to heart with a proper tournament. The first season detoured from adapting the video games in a straightforward way to give our protagonist, John Doe (Anthony Mackie), a proper origin story and character arc. Putting an actual Twisted Metal tournament in season 2 should gear shift the series into high-octane action.
Twisted Metal’s season 1 lore was actually pretty compelling! Little is known about John Doe’s life before the fall, except that he grew up in a typical middle-class home with his parents and sister. After the world ended, and he was separated from his family, John woke up alone in the front seat of their station wagon — his memory gone, even his own name lost to him. Though a marauder would eventually steal the car, John clung to a charred family photo as the only proof of the life he once had.
His luck changed when he stumbled across an abandoned sedan deep in a wooded grove, its owner long dead. John made the car his home — until a group of Butchers tracked him down, forcing him to flee with it. He took refuge in a junkyard, where he found an old license plate, attached it to the car, and gave it a name: Evelyn.
Now a hardened “Milkman,” John is one of the few couriers brave enough to cross the gang-filled post-apocalyptic America. On a run to New San Francisco in season 1, he survives an ambush by Vultures in a derelict mall and completes his delivery, only to be offered something greater. Raven, the city’s COO, promises him permanent safety within its walls if he completes one final job: retrieve a package from New Chicago.
John accepts, unaware that the journey ahead will test more than just his survival skills. Along the way, he teams up with Quiet (a show-exclusive character), a sharp-edged outsider with a vendetta of her own. What begins as a tense partnership slowly becomes something deeper, forcing John to face his forgotten past, question who he’s become, and consider, for the first time, what kind of future he wants.
The season ends with John getting accepted into New San Fran, but it’s all a ploy from Raven to force him to be her driver in the tournament with other cities to win the ultimate prize from Calypso. What’s more, it looks like Dollface’s origin from the games has been changed to make her Doe’s long-lost sister, so his origin is bound to be a relevant force throughout the season.
Season 1’s backstory detour fleshed out John Doe as a character before he and Quiet were inevitably thrown into a deadly tournament. As someone who watched the whole thing, I will say it raised the emotional stakes of season 2, giving the tournament real narrative weight instead of just being a chaotic spectacle of “car-nage,” as seen in the early games. Season 1 also established the bleak, broken state of the world, making a monster truck deathmatch feel like a disturbingly logical outcome. The people of this world have become desperate to earn a wish from the mysterious Calypso, the shadowy figure pulling the strings behind this twisted society.
And who knows, the season could wrap the same way it ended for the original John Doe in Twisted Metal Black, and see Quiet take over the wheel as protagonist in the future.
Twisted Metal season 2 revs its way onto Peacock on July 31.