Twisted Metal - “LZGTBZY” & “ONURMRK” Review
At long last, the chaos we’ve been waiting for crashes onto our screens. With Rob Zombie’s “Dragula” screaming through the speakers just like in the games, Twisted Metal season 2 finally throttles forward as the titular tournament officially begins. In these two episodes – “LZGTBZY” and “ONURMRK” – the series revs its engine, giving us big stunts, cheeky romance, and a cavalcade of new and old champions entering the arena.
The first half, “LZGTBZY,” takes us into Diesel City: a toxic industrial sprawl where privilege and brutality hide behind a thin veneer of order. This place operates like a powder keg disguised as a marketplace. It doesn’t take long before we’re shown that this place is everything Quiet, Darkside, and the rest of the Dolls are working to destroy.
John and Quiet’s brief foray into the Insiders’ inner sanctum takes them straight into absurdity: posing as elites, attending a decadent soiree, while Darkside hacks vaults and Sweet Tooth skulks in disguise, hunting for chaos. The humor is bawdy, savage, and perfectly calibrated – Sweet Tooth wearing a cape so that he can hide his murders like a macabre magic trick is hilarious. Meanwhile, Stu – always the overlooked sidekick – gets abducted, dressed up, and paraded like an exhibit at a depraved insider orgy.
What really gives these episodes their heft is not just the spectacle, but how they raise emotional stakes. The world building prior to the tournament is not filler. It deepens character and situation.
Then it’s “ONURMRK,” where the pedal hits the floor. The tournament explodes into action as all of the contestants race to deliver a package through death-wrought terrain. This is the action the series has promised since day one.
But even amid the violence, there’s purpose. Familiar faces return: Mr. Grimm threatens Sweet Tooth, Raven arrives as the driver of Shadow, the Holy Men and a baby-Preacher take over driving Brimstone, and we even get to see Hammerhead and Junkyard Dog – I mean, this is the cartoonish guns-and-gore extravaganza that people who played the games will remember, brought to life with startling fidelity. The episodes end with Roadkill sacrificing competitive advantage to save a child – it’s both reckless and humane, a moment that defines both John and Quiet’s moral compasses in stark contrast to the majority of the other contestants.
Anthony Carrigan casts a twin aura of theatricality and threat as Calypso, and by the end of episode 5, the field has already thinned and the chaos of Twisted Metal is officially here and the tournament setup we’ve long anticipated has finally arrived, fully charged with unpredictable human motives.
And therein lies the strength of the show. It gets its weird tone right and rides it all the way. With the tournament now officially underway, I can’t wait to see what the rest of the season has in store.