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Two years after Season 1, Peacock and Sony’s Twisted Metal Season 2–based on the video game series–debuts this week. Ahead of the sophomore season debut on July 31, GameSpot visited the set in Toronto and spoke with some of the cast and crew, including stars Anthony Mackie (John), Stephanie Beatriz (Quiet), and Joe Samoa (Sweet Tooth), along with writer and showrunner M.J. Smith.
We also got a hold of some images from Season 2, showing off familiar characters and new ones, like Anthony Kerrigan’s Calypso.
And speaking of Calypso, he plays a major role in Season 2. That’s because Season 2 is all about a massive vehicular combat tournament run by Calypso.
Beatriz said the stunts in Season 2 are “really insane,” and it won’t be all CG. In fact, she teased that there are many practical stunts in Season 2, helped in part by the hiring of Logan Halliday. You may know him by name, but Hollday was Ryan Gosling’s stunt double for the action-filled stunt movie Fall Guy where he set the world record for most canon rolls in a car.
“We flipped a ambulance over. We did a cannon roll stunt with an ambulance that turned out really cool when it flipped over,” Halliday said. “We have some things coming up… we put together some chase sequences right now that that would hold up in any platform, any movie, any TV show.”
For Twisted Metal, Halliday is organizing the numerous stunts and set pieces, so while he’s not personally putting himself in a car that’s flipping over while on fire, he still gets nervous in a different way.
“I feel so responsible because I’m asking people to do things that are super dangerous that I’m normally doing and and I’m standing on the side of the road waiting for it to happen. I’m going, ‘I am more nervous right now than if I was in that car.’ That’s a good thing, you want it to scare you, and you want to be nervous, because if you’re not, then something bad is probably going to happen,” he said. “It’s got to scare you a little bit because, because you make one little mistake in anything that we do and and us or somebody else can get hurt or worse.”
Showrunner MJ Smith, meanwhile, said Twisted Metal Season 2 is inspired in part by Netflix’s Squid Game, in terms of the structure for how the tournament goes. Smith is also taking inspiration from his work on Netflix’s Cobra Kai.
“I wrote on Cobra Kai for a long time, so obviously I’m very involved in how tournaments work, having written some tournament episodes,” he said.
Smith also discussed why the tournament is happening in Season 2 and not Season 1. He said it was important for viewers to build a connection with the characters first and then see them in new ways, and better understand their motivations, in the tournament in Season 2.
“We want you to understand how the world works and how the characters work, and how the story is really about John and Quiet and their relationship and their like emotional connection,” Smith said. “We wanted to build something that got to the tournament, so when the tournament happened, it meant something. So that when you’re coming into the tournament, you’re like, ‘Okay, I understand the world. I understand the characters,’ and now we can have fun. What is it like for all these people to be in one place? Like, what is it like for them to have life and death situations?”
The other reason for holding the tournament back for Season 2 is a practical one: money. Bringing it all together has been “extremely expensive,” Smith said, and he was intent on “doing it right” as opposed to putting it on screen before it was time.
Check out some images from Twisted Metal Season 2 below, and look for the season premiere on Peacock on July 31.
GameSpot’s travel and accommodation to Toronto was paid for by Sony Pictures Television.
Credit: Sony Pictures Television/Peacock
