A Recap of Season 1 of ‘Chucky’

Written by Theron Reynolds

CHUCKY -- Season:1 -- Pictured: Chucky -- (Photo by: Brendan Meadows/USA Network)

Caution: This article contains spoilers for Season One of ‘Chucky’. Also, this piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.
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35 years ago, the movie Child’s Play premiered and the world was first introduced to Charles Lee Ray (better known as Chucky), a homicidal doll that’s not only grown to become a household name but has grossed over 200 million Dollars at the box office and has become synonymous with the Halloween season. After the direct to digital releases Curse of Chucky & Cult of Chucky gathered the highest critical reception since the original film, the TV show Chucky premiered in 2021 on USA & Syfy to continue the adventures of the killer doll.

Still set in the same continuity of the films, in 2 seasons, Chucky, has not only managed to both honor and build on the story it’s established over the past 3 decades, it’s also been able to cut a new path in this world of legacy sequels, reboots, re-quels, and remakes, a not so easy task for one of the very few series that has kept it’s continuity since its inception. Chucky (Brad Dourif – Deadwood: The Movie, Halloween II) has always been a notable standout from his horror brethren like Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and Michael Myers because of his human nature. Regardless of the fact that he’s not even 3 feet tall and in the body of a child’s toy, Chucky gets chances to interact with his potential victims in ways that these other famed monsters just don’t get to. The conversations, the jokes, the relationships, it keeps Chucky surprisingly grounded in a genre that routinely goes for something grander.

To set the stage for the show, we last left our knee-high friend in 2017’s Cult of Chucky, where Chucky has found a way to splinter his soul and is no longer confined to a single body. Nica Pearce (Fiona Dourif – The Stand, The Purge) who had been sent to Harrogate Psychiatric Hospital due to the deaths of her family members at the hands of Chucky finds herself now possessed and in the company of Tiffany Valentine (Jennifer Tilly – 7 Days to Vegas, Family Guy) even after a rescue attempt from franchise hero Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent – South of Central, The Dark Military).

Only a few weeks later, Season 1 of Chucky introduces us to 14-year-old Jake Wheeler (Zackary Arthur – Transparent, The 5th Wave), a young man living in Charles Lee Ray’s hometown of Hackensack New Jersey, who’s still having a hard time dealing with the death of his mother and secret crush on true crime podcaster Devon Evans (Björgvin Arnarson – PEN15, The Seventh Day). Bullied at school by his cousin Junior (Teo Briones – Ratched, Lethal Weapon) & his girlfriend Popularity Queen Lexy Cross (Alyvia Alyn Lind – Daybreak, Future Man) and at home where he lives with his grieving abusive alcoholic father Lucas (Devon Sawa – Hunter Hunter, Black Friday) he happens to come across a certain doll at a nearby yard sale which will soon upend his entire world. Chucky is back, and for the first time ever, he’s got a plan!

All Chucky needs to do is convince Jake, or frankly any child he comes across in Hackensack to take a life and he’ll have all the power he needs to raise his army of Good Guy Dolls. It’s a sharp contrast from the earlier stories we got in the franchise as those mostly revolved around Chucky looking to transfer his soul into a different body, Chucky has grown used to living in the body of a doll and is content seeking revenge and reveling in evil above all else. This was a welcome development for the franchise as the previous films allowed Chucky to finally reach that long term goal, and there needed to be a better motivation to keep things going.

Having Chucky return to his hometown and giving us flashbacks showing his growing depravity in his younger years fleshes the character out in a way that couldn’t have been expected back in 1988. Again, this is a character who is more human than a number of other horror icons, so at some point we needed the backstory so we can keep seeing him that way. His childhood obsession with blood and violent acts, the murder of his father (at the hands of another serial killer) before killing his own mother, his murder of a janitor at a foster home, we’re given enough information to work out why Chucky enjoys corrupting the youth he encounters, Chucky wants the kids of the world to grow up seeing red the same way he did. In a fun bit of casting, when we finally get to see Charles Lee Ray in flashbacks around the time of Child’s Play, he’s portrayed by Dourif’s own daughter and fellow franchise star Fiona! These flashbacks also show us how Chucky & Tiffany met, and that their disfunction and constant betrayal of each other goes back further than we thought (Tiffany was responsible for alerting the police to Chucky’s identity of The Lakeshore Strangler leading to his subsequent “death”).

While Season 1 of Chucky brings a sense of intrigue that we got bits and pieces of from the last two films, it’s clear that moving to television has allowed franchise runner Don Mancini to truly take the time to flesh out these stories and give the characters a more well wounded presence. Even franchise favorites Andy Barclay and Kyle (Christine Elise – Body Snatchers, BH90210) get a chance to shine here, and while they may no longer be the direct focus of the series, Chucky certainly hasn’t forgotten them.
The TV show firmly sets Chucky in a new path as similar to other horror franchises over the decades, it’s focused on a younger audience. Andy Barclay might be Chucky’s nemesis but across 7 films, he’s largely targeted adults, and unlike his horror brethren he hasn’t had any grand reason to go after kids. Having Chucky seek to both corrupt and kill a number of these kids (and their parents) has certainly endeared him more to a younger crowd, which I supposed means we’re doing what he wants.

One last and certainly important point to mention that the show does well is make it clear that while Chucky may be a monster, even he has his limits. Whether it’s inhabiting the body of Nica or acknowledging his Genderfluid kid (Glen/Glenda), Chucky makes it clear that he hurts and kills based on the screws loose in his head. At one point Tiffany even mentions some of the things that Chucky has been doing in Nica’s body, which just adds another unexpected new layer to a character we all thought we figured out in the 90s.  

Not only is Chucky’s 1st season a fitting follow-up to a highly regarded long running franchise, but it very clearly demonstrates that a number of other popular horror franchises might have better success trying their luck on the smaller screen as well. A24 and Peacock are currently working on a Friday the 13th Prequel Series, and television rights are being shopped around for the Halloween series as we speak, TV is certainly no longer the limitation to Horror that it once was perceived as.

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