Summary
- Paramount has released a first trailer and revealed a release window for Twisted Metal season two.
- The trailer ends with an Axel tease, a character from the games who is just a guy with wheels connected to his arms.
- Season two’s first trailer also provided first looks at Mr. Grimm and Dollface.
With pretty much any video game ripe for the adaptation treatment, Twisted Metal was revived and turned into a TV show in 2023. Something of a deep cut by anyone’s standards, but clearly the show was a hit as Twisted Metal is getting a second season. That’s not something that is guaranteed for all shows in the current landscape.
Paramount has confirmed when season two of Twisted Metal will debut via its first trailer. Premiering this summer, Anthony Mackie will return as John Doe with some other racers from season one joining him, including Samoa Joe’s Sweet Tooth. Twisted Metal fans are more concerned about the characters from the games that will be new to the show in season two, though.
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The throwback character that has generated the most interest since the trailer dropped is one we didn’t even get a proper look at – Axel. Season two’s debut trailer ends with someone placing their hand inside the gears of a wheel. For the uninitiated, that character is, you guessed it, Axel.
Axel In Live-Action Boggles The Mind
Axel’s absence from season one was unsurprising since adapting the character and his vehicle in live-action will be hard to do. Axel doesn’t technically drive a vehicle since he is a vehicle. Axel sticks his hands into two wheels and away he goes. Exactly how Paramount plans on translating that into a live-action TV show remains unclear. I guess we’ll find out this summer.
Oh wait, he’s called Axel because he is the axel. I just got it.
Despite being one of Twisted Metal’s simplest designs, Axel was one of the game’s wilder ideas. The beauty of a video game is most of the time, you don’t need to worry about what something will look like in real life, or even if what you’re creating would really work. I can’t imagine it even crossed the minds of Axel’s designers that someone would be trying to figure out how to make the concept a reality for a TV show spinoff 30 years later.
Axel isn’t the only character from the Twisted Metal roster that will be making their TV show debut in season two. The trailer gave us a much better look at Dollface and Mr. Grimm than it did at Axel since we saw their faces and not just their hand. In Paramount’s defense, if we were shown Axel without his wheels, we probably wouldn’t have known who we were looking at for sure.
Despite the Twisted Metal show being successful enough to get a second season, that success doesn’t appear to have transferred back to the video game world. A live service Twisted Metal game apparently in the works at PlayStation was reportedly canceled in 2024. It has been 13 years and two console generations since the last Twisted Metal game.
