Twisted Metal Season 2 is set to premiere on July 31st, and based on the trailer, it looks like the show will finally take its demolition derby premise to heart with a proper tournament. The first season deviated from the video game adaptation in a straightforward way by giving our protagonist, John Doe (Anthony Mackie), an origin story and origin arc. Adding a Twisted Metal tournament to Season 2 should shift the series into high-octane action.
Twisted Metal ‘s Season 1 lore was truly 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 a station car—his memory gone, even his own name lost to him. Although a looter eventually stole 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 upon an abandoned sedan deep in a wooded area, 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 “milk,” John is one of the few couriers brave enough to traverse post-apocalyptic, gang-ridden America. On a run to New San Francisco in the first season, he survives an ambush by vultures in an abandoned mall and completes his delivery, only to receive something bigger. Raven, the city’s COO, promises 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 Silent (a character exclusive to the show), a sharp-edged stranger with a vendetta of his own. What begins as a tense partnership slowly blossoms into something deeper, forcing John to confront his forgotten past, question who he has become, and consider, for the first time, what kind of future he desires.
The season ends with John being accepted into New San Fran, but it’s all a ploy by Raven to force him to be her driver in the tournament with other cities to win Calypso’s ultimate prize. Furthermore, it appears that Dollface’s origin from the Games has been altered to make her DOE’s long-lost sister, so her origin should be a relevant force throughout the season.
The first season’s backstory provided a foundation for John Doe as a character before he and the Silence were inevitably thrown into a deadly tournament. As someone who watched the entire thing, I’ll say it raised the emotional stakes of the second season, giving the tournament real narrative weight rather than just a chaotic spectacle of “car-nage” as seen in the first games. The first season also established the dark and broken state of the world, making a monster truck seem like a disturbingly logical outcome. The people of this world have become desperate to grant a wish from the mysterious Calypso, the shadowy figure pulling the strings behind this twisted society.
And who knows, the season could wrap up the same way it ended for the original John Doe in Metal Twisted Black and see the quiet one take the wheel as the protagonist in the future.
Twisted Metal Season 2 blazes its way onto Peacock on July 31.
