TV Needs Chucky's Fearless Brand of Foolishness

No one is doing it like Chucky.

Syfy/USA Network’s episodic continuation of Don Mancini’s killer-doll movie franchise closed out its third season this week with the world at its fingertips. What was once a simple conceit –– what if the creepy doll from your childhood became the vessel for a serial killer’s soul –– has come into its own as a fearless show that threw caution and logic to the wind two seasons and about 100 kills ago. Now, it just lives each episode with a singular purpose: How can we make this weirder than ever before?

After making his debut in 1988’s Child’s Play, Chucky was a straightforward horror villain until 1998’s Bride of Chucky, when Mancini took a darkly comedic detour. He gave Chucky a sense of humor and an equally depraved partner in crime, Tiffany (first played as a human by Jennifer Tilly, who later provided the voice when Tiffany inhabited the body of a bride doll). Things got meta in 2004’s Seed of Chucky when Tiffany’s soul was put into the body of actress Jennifer Tilly herself, where she still resides in Season 3.

In the first season of the Chucky TV series, the plastic psychopath went back to his roots of terrorizing a small town and making orphans of three teenagers (Zackary Arthur, Björgvin Arnarson and Alyvia Alyn Lind). With no parental guardians left, he followed the trio to a strict Catholic school in Season 2, where they tried the power of Christ against his Damballa voodoo magic. Let’s just say he wasn’t compelled. But in Season 3, Mancini decided he was done playing with small-scale horror shows. For the new season, Chucky aimed his bloodlust at a bigger target –– the White House.

This season saw Chucky ingratiate himself into the First Family through their vulnerable young son to amplify his power and grotesquely butcher his way through the line of succession. But his brush with a Catholic exorcism last year infected his soul, and left him to grapple with mortality — an existential moment he answered by stealing the nation’s nuclear arsenal, nuking the North Pole, and almost upgrading his thirst for blood to a mass-casualty scale just so he could go out with a bang. 

In the final episodes after Chucky “dies,” Brad Dourif (who has voiced him since the beginning) appeared on screen as the embodiment of his wayward soul trying to find a way out of purgatory. He manages to hitch a ride in the body of his teenage adversary Jake (Arthur) and track down the original dollmaker (played by John Waters), who still had one last prototype for Chucky to inhabit. The dollmaker also had the bride prototype, allowing Tiffany to shed her Jennifer Tilly suit for good.

If you read any of that and thought “That sounds incredibly stupid,” you would be right. And that’s what’s made it a blast to watch. The show has little interest in addressing the matters of reality, like what happens to the country when their president (Devon Sawa) has his eyes gouged out by a doll or when the White House is set ablaze by a séance gone wrong. But more importantly, letting go of the reins of reality in the world of Chucky has given its concept a new lease on life. This franchise should be running out steam. How far can you actually take a killer doll? How many ways can he be resurrected? How much blood can he possibly have on his hands before all the goodwill of Barbie is wiped away by a national doll purge? Any of those questions should be slowing down the franchise more than Chucky’s little doll legs. Yet Mancini and company seem to be having more fun than ever, and it shows.

In a recent episode, a convalescent Chucky enviously watches M3GAN, an AI-powered killer doll who terrorized theaters in 2023, and complains, “Little bitch, she stole my moves!" Previously, he visited a voodoo doctor that looks hilariously like any ol’ family physician to get advice on how to beat the scourge of Catholicism on his soul. When Dourif appears as Chucky in purgatory, there is literally a movie theater where various deranged shades of his soul are watching the greatest hits of his 35 years of kills. And need we remind you, he nuked the North Pole!

There is simply nothing this show won’t do and, frankly, that may be its greatest strength in the crowded arena of television. Even in the most bizarre circumstances, slasher stories can get bogged down by logistics. But when a killer doll is running around in the world, why should a little thing like the Secret Service be a real obstacle? Sometimes reality is just a vibe killer, and Chucky is nothing if not a vibe.

So where should the series go next, should it get a Season 4? Given that NBCUniversal owns both Chucky and M3GAN, maybe it is officially time for plastic to meet programming in a battle of the dolls. Chucky could go abroad on a “Where in the World is Chucky” international tour, splattering blood across the Seven Wonders of the World like graffiti. He’s already stopped by The Amityville Horror house this season, but why should studio ownership stop him? Let’s do Freddy vs. Jason vs. Chucky.

One thing that might prove tricky, even for Chucky, is time travel because the mere sight of him may be enough to kill a Victorian child, no knife needed. But truly, even that wouldn’t be a surprise. Horror movies have a tendency of capturing the cultural moment, but fading with time and familiarity of their schtick. Chucky never lets its audience get too comfortable. So whether the next adventure is “Chucky in Space” or “Chucky on the Magic School Bus,” fans should take the ride. It’s a wild one.

Chucky Seasons 1-3 are streaming on Peacock. 

Hunter Ingram is a TV writer living in North Carolina and watching way too much television. His byline has appeared in Variety, Emmy Magazine, USA Today, and across Gannett's USA Today Network newspapers.