Twisted Metal season 1, episode 10 recap: “SHNGRLA”

The previous episode of Twisted Metal started off with a tease of an all-out car fight with all of the characters in the show, fighting each other at once. The opening of this episode delivers on that tease.

We get a whole sequence of lots of car tricks, rockets, clown violence, and explosions. In a way it feels like when the writers were told to make a TV show based on Twisted Metal, they visualized this sequence and worked backwards to get the rest of the story.

Twisted Metal season 1, episode 10 recap: The final showdown with Stone

The over-the-top sequence ends with Quiet and John getting the better of Agent Stone who is bleeding out with an axe in his face. He is given the choice to die slowly or quick, with Quiet leaving him with a gun and a single bullet as they drive away.

Also, during the action, Sweet Tooth is seemingly killed after he demands that Stu kills Mike. In response Stu shoots Sweet Tooth and the two of them escape together.

With the action sequence behind them, John and Quiet make it to New San Francisco with moments to spare. Raven, upon seeing the package, welcomes John as a new citizen of New San Francisco, but she won’t let Quiet in, as she was not part of the deal.

John says that if Quiet can’t come inside, then he’s not coming in either. Quiet, however, won’t let John give up his dream for her, and shoots him in the shoulder so that he’ll have to be taken inside for medical attention.

After he goes inside, New San Francisco tries to make Quiet their new milkman, but she takes the delivery and throws it to the people forced to live outside the cities. After this, she takes up a new career of stopping other milkmen on the road and taking part of each delivery to distribute among those forced to live outside the cities.

She becomes a sort of post-apocalyptic Robin Hood.

Twisted Metal season 1, episode 10 recap: The life John always dreamed of.

Meanwhile back in the city, John is saved, and he begins his new life inside the city. While at first it’s great, he begins to grow bored of his new life while thinking about his life outside the walls.

It doesn’t help that it turns out everything about his new life is a lie constructed by Raven to make John like the city, because she still has further plans for him. So, it comes as a shock to her when she learns that he’s planning to leave the city to go back and live on the outside and try to find Quiet again.

To keep John, Raven plays her biggest card. She takes him to a house and reveals that it’s his house.

It’s the house that he grew up in that he can’t remember. She tells him that she has the personal history that he has been looking for his entire life.

If John sticks around, he can finally have all the answers that he’s been looking for. But surprisingly, John doesn’t want it.

John tells her that he’s a different person now, and his past doesn’t matter. What matters is his future, and he wants to use that future to find Quiet.

With her last card played, Raven uses her actual last card, putting a gun to John’s head. It turns out that there’s about to be a special car-themed violence tournament coming up and she has selected John to be her champion for the event.

The greatest drivers from all over the world will be there and she even gets to say the words “Twisted Metal” when she’s describing how much carnage there’s going to be. The season comes to a close with a cliffhanger for the second season being the real Twisted Metal show.

Then as a final teaser, Quiet runs into somebody who is claiming to be John’s long lost sister, something that will surely be a central plot point in the second season. Then in a final, final teaser, it’s revealed that Sweet Tooth is alive, because of course they aren’t going into a second season without Sweet Tooth around.

Twisted Metal season 1, episode 10 recap: More Twisted Metal to come…

So it turns out that the entire first season of Twisted Metal was just a setup to the actual Twisted Metal show, that is being teased for the plot of season 2. It’s really quite a promise to close the season out on.

The payoff for this season’s buildup was the climatic action sequence at the start of this final episode and it really felt like a sequence that fit the Twisted Metal name. So it’s pretty impressive to end that same episode, essentially promising the audience that they hadn’t seen anything yet.

Really though, the entire season worked because of the charm of the two main characters. Both Anthony Mackie and Stephanie Beatriz saw this show as an opportunity to break away from the roles that they’re both most famous for.

In both cases, they did a fantastic job. In a show about car crashes, based on a car crashing video game, the series had enough faith in these two actors to dedicate almost an entire episode to the two of them being trapped in a fast food restaurant.

While the season ended with the two of them apart, hopefully they’ll get back together quickly when season 2 starts, because the show is at its strongest when the two of them are playing off of each other.

What did you think of Twisted Metal season 1? Let us know in the comments below!

You can watch Twisted Metal season 1 on Peacock TV.