‘Chucky’ Season 3 Finale Recap: What’s Next for TV’s Least Predictable Horror Show?

When the rascally little murderous doll Chucky made the jump from direct-to-DVD movies to television in 2021, it seemed like the logical IP extension any streaming-hungry development exec would recommend – the kind of thing that can suck the life out of a once-beloved film series. Why make movies about characters whose fates could be slowed down, stretched out, and endlessly reiterated over the course of padded yet insubstantial 10-episode seasons? So it’s been one of recent TV’s great surprises that Don Mancini’s Chucky has become something both surprising and retro: A good old-fashioned network-ish series with weekly twists, turns, weird surprises, and some of the gnarliest gore ever seen on television. It’s also arguably the most successful marshaling of winding horror-series continuity ever attempted.

Beyond its ability to wrangle characters and subplots from the first seven Child’s Play movies while still introducing new elements, Chucky also recklessly, brilliantly juggles elements of teen soap, pitch-black comedy, and multiple varieties of horror from episode to episode. The end of Chucky’s third season (split into two four-episode batches) has taken influence from spookhouse horror like Insidious (though with buckets more blood) as well as the specifically namechecked Flatliners, before heading into more gothic territory in its eventfully bonkers finale.

Recapping everything that’s happened so far in the series would take ages, so let’s stick to the basics: Chucky has taken up residence in the White House. As the trusted doll to the young son of the president, he’s managed to carry out a series of grisly murders, including of the president himself, before getting killed (again) while attempting to use presidential resources to cause nuclear Armageddon. But his spirit – the serial killer Charles Lee Ray (embodied by Chucky voice actor Brad Dourif) – continues to haunt 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (which has also become a “magnet” for unsettled spirits). Jake (Zackary Arthur), his boyfriend Devon (Björgvin Arnarson), and their pal Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Lind) have managed to infiltrate the White House through Lexy’s relationship with the president’s older son Brant (Jackson Kelly).

Tipped that the haunting and bloodshed will end of some version of Chucky agrees to sacrifice himself, Jake agrees to flatline into the spirit world – where he also hopes to get a Chucky to tell him about the whereabouts of Lexy’s long-missing younger sister Caroline. Once there, he visits with Charles Lee Ray – also referred to as Chucky Prime – and sees other versions of the killer doll from the course of the series,  including a ripped Chucky, an Apocalypse Now-style Chucky, and a brainwashed “Good Chucky.” Eventually, Good Chucky tells Jake that a man named Wendell Wilkins (who he refers to as “grandfather”) should know where Caroline is. Jake then tries to convince Good Chucky to make the ultimate sacrifice, but it turns out that Good Chucky isn’t so good; he’s distracted Jake while Chucky Prime possesses his body.

Jake, now possessed by Chucky, returns to life in time to escape a burning White House with Lexy, Devon, and Brant. Jake Chucky then takes the original trio to Wendell Wilkins (John Waters, playing a different role than in his last franchise appearance), creator of the original Good Guy dolls. Wendell does indeed have Caroline; both of them are fully indoctrinated as acolytes of Chucky, who wants to get back into his “real” Good Guy Doll body. Jake’s friends go along with the ritual, wanting him back in his proper body. Restored to his familiar doll form, Chucky meets up with Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly), who is permanently occupying the body of, uh, Jennifer Tilly, and has recently escaped death row at the last possible minute via a bloody shoot-out. Tiffany is also restored to a new doll body (a handy way of escaping the police’s pursuit of notorious murderer Jennifer Tilly). The amorous dolls drive off together, chauffeured by the prepubescent Caroline, who grimly notes that she’s “too young for this shit.”

What of Jake, Devon, and Lexy? As the final moments of the episode reveal, another, offscreen ritual traps them in marionette bodies at the doll-filled home of Wendell Wilkins. Nica (Fiona Dourif), another of Chucky’s past victims, arrives to rescue them, but she’d held at gunpoint by Wendell. The episode ends before revealing what becomes of her.

So, whew. That’s just one hourlong installment of possibly the best show on television. So what does it mean for Chucky’s fourth season? Well, first it has to get greenlit; the actual ending of the episode was a direct-to-camera address from Chucky himself, sitting in a burning Oval Office, announcing that he’ll be “running” for a “fourth term.”

As for what that fourth season might entail, Chucky is never predictable enough to telegraph its intentions. Nothing in the second season particularly indicated that the third would include a dying, liverspotted version of Chucky uttering “fuck Santa!” as he pressed the button to nuke the North Pole for spite. The third season does include something of an uncharacteristic reset on Chucky and Tiffany; it’s been a while since both of them were confined to a single doll body, which vastly simplifies the ongoing craziness involving Chucky Prime, Jennifer Tilly being tried for murder, and so forth. Given the sudden lack of switching, swapping, and duplicating, it’s unclear what happens to the body of Jennifer Tilly, given that the “real” Tilly was last seen inhabiting a doll’s body, and getting gorily splattered across a highway. For that matter, it’s unclear what happens to the bodies of Jake, Devon, and Lexy now that they’ve been (hopefully temporarily!) become dolls in Wendell’s gothic hideout.

Whatever goes on, it seems to set the stage for more gothic stuff and maybe a return to body horror, after the recent detour into more ghostly concerns. The only sure things are that Chucky lives, and Devon Sawa will play at least one new role and die at least once. (He has, so far, played five characters in three seasons – six if you count the time one of his characters was possessed by Chucky.)

I’m not sure if any intended political satire from the third season of Chucky really landed; ultimately, the White House was just one more piece of wreckage in the killer doll’s wake, and his mid-season grappling with mortality was more mordantly funny than the political machinations behind the fake president’s radical-transparency platform. The fun of Chucky is how Don Mancini uses the kind of slasher-movie nonsense that has torpedoed lesser series as the lifeblood of this one; it’s a bit like how the soap-opera continuity of Saw became a feature rather than a bug, only here the characters are a lot more likable and easier to tell apart. Three seasons in, Chucky doesn’t feel anything like a soullessly distended IP; it’s a recasting of endless horror sequels as a kind of deranged resilience. We still root for the humans trying to take Chucky down, but when the little bastard refuses to say die, we have to hand it to him.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.