Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched the first episode of Twisted Metal’s second season with a Peacock subscription, so be warned!
The tournament is coming, drivers! Now that Twisted Metal Season 2 has finally arrived on the 2025 TV schedule, it’s time for Anthony Mackie’s John Doe to get serious. Wait, no, that would probably go against the entire concept of the loosely connected video game adaptation. Though in the very first episode, John does get serious about reading through a bunch of Baby-Sitters Club novels, and while it might have started out as desperation, it seemingly became a true obsession.
When I talked to showrunner Michael Jonathan Smith ahead of the big Season 2 premiere, I had to ask about that unexpected cameo from Ann M. Martin’s beloved novels for teens and tweens. As seen in the video above, here’s what he told me inspired that reference from a personal level:
Hell yeah. I mean, look, Baby-Sitter's Club is really important to me because it was a thing that helped my daughter actually learn to read. And I think there was something really fun about bringing something that was surprisingly sensitive to John's life.
Awww, gotta love that The Baby-Sitters Club had such a key connection point for Smith that he felt the urge to bring it into the wonky remnants of pop culture in Twisted Metal. And that John went through a pretty specific panic at the thought of continuing to read through the series despite one book being missing. Just when you think it’ll be non-important, that’s when whole new characters come into play.
Smith continued, saying he wanted that to be a familial nexus for John and his sister rekindling their relationship. In his words:
And I just love that, you know, it's also so nostalgic. I think it's something that's surprisingly nostalgic. So it was just something fun that, you know, became a touchstone for him and his sister, and something that would be connective, and I just love that it would be a book series that everyone remembers, and that a lot of people have a nostalgic connection to.
People love the book series enough that it became a critically acclaimed live-action Netflix series years ago, though it made for one of the more disappointing cancellations in 2022 when the streaming service pulled the plug. Sadly, attempts to further the show went unfulfilled as well.
One has to wonder if John Doe would have been as invested in the TV series as he was in the novels. I have to think he’d have made himself just as comfortable on the couch with his feet swinging behind him. And that dichotomy between the two is part of the fun for the showrunner, who continued:
I think it was just also just funny that this badass milkman who kills people would be like so taken by these five girls who love to babysit. . . . Also, it's about community, you know, and that's what our show is about.
I wonder if John could talk Sweet Tooth and Stu into spending an afternoon speed-reading through a bunch of Baby-Sitters Club books instead of murdering anyone with a deadlier reputation. Probably not. Sweet Tooth would likely just burn all the books eventually anyway.
Find out if John Doe will ever finish the series — could he even stand the little sisters? — when Twisted Metal Season 2 drops new episodes on Thursdays on Peacock.
