The Ending Of Twisted Metal Explained
Contains spoilers for "Twisted Metal"
"Twisted Metal" is a classic video game series that originated the once-popular "vehicular combat" genre. In "Twisted Metal," and all the other vehicular combat games that followed it, players choose a car to drive around in big 3D arenas and then proceed to pick up power-ups and weapons to try and blow up and kill other drivers in a violent, murderous destruction derby. "Twisted Metal" stood out, though, not just because it birthed (and arguably perfected) the nascent video game genre, but also because of its classic characters and surprisingly deep lore.
Now, "Twisted Metal" is getting adapted as a streaming series for Peacock. It stars Anthony Mackie, Stephanie Beatriz, Thomas Haden Church, Neve Campbell, and Samoa Joe as Sweet Tooth, while Will Arnett provides Sweet Tooth's voice in a David Prowse-James Earl Jones situation. The concept for the show came from screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick ("Deadpool"), while the showrunner is Michael Jonathan Smith, a writer from Netflix's (originally YouTube Red's) popular "Cobra Kai" show.
The story is, curiously, quite a bit different from the games. While the games were about drivers fighting in a tournament to be granted wishes, the TV series is about an amnesiac named John Doe (Mackie) driving around a post-apocalyptic wasteland to drop off a package — while, at the same time, helping escort the semi-mute fugitive Quiet (Beatriz) and being pursued by Sweet Tooth and others. It's an interesting take on the story, and while not wholly successful, the show leaves some tantalizing possibilities going forward.
What you need to remember about the plot of Twisted Metal
John Doe is what is called a "milkman" — essentially an extremely skilled driver with a souped-up and weaponized car — who couriers goods (such as medicine, food, and other supplies) across the post-apocalyptic world of the "Divided States of America." John also has amnesia, with only a burnt photo of him as a kid to link him to his past. It's eventually revealed in Episode 3, "NTHLAW1," that the world ended in the year 2002 after what seems like a large-scale cyber-attack that decimated everything all over the world.
Eventually, walled cities were constructed to protect the rich and affluent from the dangerous outside world of scavenging and violence. One such city is New San Francisco, run by the power-hungry mayor Raven (Neve Campbell), a place John sometimes does milkman runs for. Raven then offers John a job he can't pass up: take a package to New Chicago — past roving gangs, criminals, and the dangerous Sweet Tooth –- and return to New San Francisco within 10 days and he'll be granted citizenship.
Things get complicated, though, when he gets carjacked by Quiet, a fugitive on the run from Agent Stone (Thomas Haden Church), who leads a dangerous gang of would-be police officers. While John and Quiet are antagonistic towards each other at first, they eventually learn to work together — and even fall in love — during the course of their violent road trip.
What happened at the end of Twisted Metal
At the end of "Twisted Metal," John Doe successfully completes Raven's mission and delivers the package from New Chicago to New San Francisco at the last minute. His reward for the mission is the ability to live in the safe haven of New San Francisco, away from the dangers of the gang-infested post-apocalyptic wasteland he's been used to. Unfortunately, he arrives with Quiet — which wasn't part of the original deal. So before John can deny living in New San Francisco and stay with Quiet, Quiet herself shoots him — out of love — so that he's forced to be taken into medical care by the NSF medics and be safe.
John enjoys his time in NSF for a while (despite having a hard time learning how to ride a bike). However, he misses Quiet and wants to go out into the wasteland to find her again. He also starts to get bored by the repetitive routine of the suburban-like existence of the walled-in city. When he tells Raven his plans to go back outside, she tries to convince him to stay by revealing his family was from Old San Francisco before the apocalypse. Then, after that doesn't work, Raven doesn't take the rejection well and reveals her real plan all along: She had sent John to New Chicago to test his driving skills and then forces him at gunpoint to represent her in the titular "Twisted Metal" contest.
Quiet becomes a revolutionary in the wastelands
Before John and Quiet complete their aforementioned mission at the end of the first (and possibly final?) "Twisted Metal" season, Quiet had her own journey she was on. At the beginning of the season, Quiet's brother Loud (Richard Cabral) is killed by the villainous Agent Stone, the leader of a gang of cops trying to "restore order" in the post-apocalyptic "Divided States of America." However, rather than restoring order, they instead spread terror, violence, and fear — including turning the DMV into a Guantanamo Bay-esque torture black site.
Throughout the rest of the series, Quiet is on a mission to hunt down and kill Agent Stone out of revenge. John's involvement, however, complicates things. The loss of Quiet's brother left her hopeless and with a death wish, but John's friendship — and later love — makes her realize that she could find other, new connections with people. In the end, instead of killing Stone in cold blood after beating him in car combat, she decides to wash her hands of him and move on to heal.
After she leaves John to go to New San Francisco without her, Quiet — going by the codename "Roadkill" from the games — becomes a liberator of the wasteland. She steals and hijacks supplies from wayward milkmen to give back to the homeless and needy in a Robin Hood sort of way. Eventually, though, she's caught by the Dollface gang — the leader who turns out to be John's long-lost sister.
Stu finds his inner strength
While not one of the main marquee characters on the show's advertisements and promotions, Stu (Mike Mitchell, best known for being a host on the popular "Doughboys" podcast) is still an important character in the "Twisted Metal" series. He and his friend Mike (Tahj Vaughans) are based on the characters in "Twisted Metal 2" who drive the monster truck Hammerhead (which sadly doesn't make an appearance in the show). In the show, rather than being metalhead stoners who wish for (no, demand!) the ability to fly, Mike and Stu are wayward scavengers, about to be eaten by cannibals before being saved by Agent Stone's goons. Stone then offers Mike and Stu the opportunity to be law-bringers like them.
Stu, however, realizes very quickly that he's not cruel enough to be a law-bringer, and Mike eventually sells him out. Luckily, before Stu is executed, he's rescued by Sweet Tooth, who takes a quick liking to Stu (due to them both being big guys whose first name starts with "s").
Unfortunately, while Sweet Tooth is supportive of Stu, he's also psychotic and manipulative, and at one point during the final battle against Stone kills some allies with no remorse, stating, "There are no sides." Then, when Sweet Tooth forces Stu to kill his old Mike, Stu refuses, standing up for himself, and shooting Sweet Tooth in the eye — giving the clown his iconic video game injury from "Twisted Metal: Black" and forward — and seemingly killing him.
That Sweet Tooth after-credits scene
At the end of the "Twisted Metal" finale, we are greeted with an after-credits sequence. In it, we see Mike and Stu enjoying their time together on some random beach. They are hanging out with their "girlfriends" (rubber sex dolls). However, out of nowhere, a bloodied Sweet Tooth jumps out at them and starts laughing maniacally. Mike and Stu start laughing too out of fear, since the last time they saw Sweet Tooth, Stu shot him in the head. Unfortunately, Sweet Tooth eventually stops laughing and takes out his large knife before seemingly stabbing Mike to death (we don't see the penetration, just a cut of the knife, then a splash of blood from off-screen). Afterward, Sweet Tooth drags Stu away screaming.
Now, what could this all mean? Is Mike actually dead? And if so, does this permanently put a kibosh on seeing Mike and Stu drive a monster truck together? While that could indeed be true, it's just as likely to be a fake-out. Mike could either be revealed to have survived his potential stab wounds, or Sweet Tooth didn't cut him at all and what is implied to be blood is actually something else. It would honestly be a disappointment to not see Hammerhead on screen with Mike and Stu behind the wheel.
What the end of the show means
The "Twisted Metal" series seems to be explicitly anti-capitalist in nature. It shows the great disparity between the haves and have-nots in the new post-apocalyptic society, and how the haves will always continue to amass more wealth and resources by exploiting the have-nots (like John) for their own selfish ends. This is exemplified by things like the walled-in cities of New San Francisco or New Chicago — where a small minority of rich, affluent people can live in opulence and luxury, while the majority of the world lives in poverty and squalor. "Twisted Metal" simply satirizes a real issue with the wealth inequality of today.
However, the critique goes beyond that. For instance, there's Quiet's backstory that's set in the post-apocalyptic walled city of Orange County. After the end of the world, OC became a fascistic nightmare, where white upper-middle class and suburban-coded denizens keep mostly marginalized and minority workers as literal slaves. This is only a slight exaggeration of the truth today, as minimum wage workers — whether fast food or domestic workers — are vastly underpaid and constantly deal with extreme prejudice and cruelty from customers and uncaring managers. Minimum wage work is also often, and rightfully so, considered wage slavery based on the vast wealth income inequality in places like OC and around the world. Not to mention, wealth inequality is largely based on generational marginalization brought on by capitalist legislation. Sure, customers don't cut off workers' appendages when they misbehave ... yet.
The importance of human connection and cooperation
Another important message of "Twisted Metal," which is tied directly to its anti-capitalist themes, is the need for human connections, bonds, and community. In capitalism, everything is set up as a competition, and relationships within that system are meant to ideally be seen as simply transactional. Even personal friendships under capitalism are often viewed as merely stepping stones for people to network and elevate their careers — and always at the expense of others. We see how this manifests at the beginning of the show, where John Doe isolates himself due to his work, and treats every interaction with suspicion as his only really close relationship is with his (non-sentient) car, Evelyn. The same goes for Quiet, who isolates herself from human connection by not even speaking. They both work alone in a form of toxic individualism, and even when forced together due to unforeseen circumstances, they still try to find ways to undermine or exploit each other at every opportunity.
However, once they decide to actually open up and work together as a team, they start to actually succeed in ways they couldn't have alone. They even find love and a bond that their isolation denied them. It's this connection to others that even leads to Quiet becoming a liberator for the people of the wasteland. She is attempting to foster communities by allowing them basic necessities denied by their world in the form of mutual aid.
The police are just as bad as – if not worse than — the criminals
The "Twisted Metal" show joins a welcome tradition within modern media of being more critical about Hollywood's role in perpetuating "copaganda" in their stories. Copaganda describes depictions of the police in the media that glorify or otherwise celebrate them while ignoring the realities of policing, especially police violence and mistreatment by officers. "Twisted Metal" frames its police — Agent Stone and his gang of "law keepers" — as the most vicious and dangerous gang roaming the wastelands. The way they dispatch Quiet's brother, Loud — by capturing him and Quiet and forcing one of them to commit suicide or they both die — is cruel and unusual punishment and unnecessarily authoritarian.
Furthermore, Agent Stone rattles off the virtues of the "broken window theory." Coined by sociologists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, it essentially describes crime as a series of escalations — one broken window leads to another broken window that leads to another until crime is normalized and rampant. That, of course, has been largely debunked, not least because it has often been used to target marginalized communities and overly inflate police budgets.
Not only that, but Stone and his gang of police officers don't differentiate between the extremities of crime. Scavenging for food out of hunger, not having a driving permit, and murder are all equal crimes in Stone's mind, and it's the obvious result of a man who fully believes in the theory of small crimes inevitably leading to large crimes.
What have the cast and crew of Twisted Metal said about the ending?
In an interview with SyFy, Samoa Joe said he hopes that the second season gets to be more much violent and dark than the first season, since Sweet Tooth is far less bloodthirsty and evil in the show than he is in the games. Sweet Tooth is indeed violent and psychotic in the show as well (he does kill his mom and stepdad by starving them to death), but there's an (arguably welcome) silliness to Joe and Will Arnett's portrayal when compared to the Sweet Tooth of the games, especially the later games that the show's version is physically based off of.
Anthony Mackie, meanwhile, in an interview with Deadline said, "[John]'s going to have some challenges that's gonna come his way that's gonna force his hand to be more of an adult and make some really tough decisions because you can't be a milkman all your life." It seems that there are going to be many morally gray moments in Season 2 if it indeed happens. For instance, if Twister or Quiet or even his sister Dollface joins the tournament — and it's "kill or be killed" — how do you make the right choice of who lives or dies?
What the end of Twisted Metal Season 1 could mean for the franchise
One of the most exciting aspects of the ending of the "Twisted Metal" series is the fact that, well, the show finally introduces the concept of the titular Twisted Metal contest into the story. Like the recent 2021 "Mortal Kombat" movie, the 2023 "Twisted Metal" streaming series doesn't even introduce the main conceit of the game at all, leaving it all up for a potential sequel (or second season) to do so. Luckily, we see glimpses of other drivers from the game in a montage of photos to get fans of the game excited, including fan-favorites Mr. Grimm and Axel.
They also imply that other drivers from the game who showed up earlier in the series — such as Twister, Preacher (Jason Mantzoukas), and Flower Power — will be joining the Twisted Metal tournament as well. This opens the door for other characters introduced in the series, such as Mr. Slam (Creek Wilson) and Dollface, to join the tournament too. Furthermore, Raven is a playable character in the 2001 game "Twisted Metal: Black," and while the two characters have nothing in common (the show's version is a high-powered mayor of a walled city, while the other is a goth girl who drives a hearse), there could be a possibility of Neve Campbell behind the wheel on screen at some point.
Finally, there's also the possibility that Agent Stone survived the finale (we don't see him die on-screen). Could his character be joining the tournament also?
Could the supernatural be introduced into the series?
Another exciting thing about the reveal of the aforementioned Twisted Metal tournament at the end of Season 1 is that it could also lead to the introduction of the supernatural elements that exist in the game as well. While John and Quiet briefly meet Calypso while picking up Raven's package in New Chicago (or at least hear Calypso's voice through an intercom), he's not really mentioned in the show outside of some shots of graffiti saying "Calypso is Real" and such. However, in the games, Calypso is the one who runs the Twisted Metal tournament in pretty much every entry (except "TM4," but we don't like to talk about that one), and he has magical powers that grant any wish the winner of the tournament desires — though the wish usually backfires in a Monkey's Paw sort of way.
In the finale, once Raven forces John at gunpoint to be her driver in the Twisted Metal tournament, she mentions that Calypso is indeed running the Twisted tournament and that the prize is the winner's deepest desire. This means that Calypso might have magic powers in the show as well.
This also means that Mr. Grimm — who is briefly seen in one of the photos during the montage of contestants — could be the actual Grim Reaper like he was in the first two games. He's been human in other games (like "Twisted Metal: Black"), but the Reaper version is still the best one, nonetheless.