PeacockThe wasteland was everywhere you turned on the set of Twisted Metal Season 2.By the time I arrived at the old airplane hangar that serves as home to the Peacock Original Series’ second season, there was a pile of smoldering metal and machinery just outside the building. Apparently, a big explosion was filmed only a few minutes before.But that’s no big deal for a show like this. After the first season established a world where cars come with rocket launchers and demented clowns drive ice cream vans, the main goal in every department, from costumes to stunts, has been building on what already exists and escalating from last season, all in the hopes of recapturing the magic of the original game. With a crew of dedicated artists all looking to push themselves — and the story itself — further, this isn’t Fallout or The Last of Us. It’s the post-apocalypse unlike you’ve ever seen it before.Our Story So FarAnthony Mackie as John Doe in Twisted Metal Season 2. | PeacockTwisted Metal Season 1 was already full of brutal carnage. But it’s clear at every moment of Season 2 that it just served as setup for the ultimate event: John Doe (Mackie) and Quiet (Stephanie Beatriz) participating in the Twisted Metal demolition derby tournament run by Calypso (Anthony Carrigan). That was a purposeful choice from showrunner Michael Jonathan “MJ” Smith.“We're setting up a post-apocalyptic world that's very specific,” he said in a roundtable interview Inverse attended. “We want you to understand how the world works, how the characters work, and how the story is really about John and Quiet and their relationship and their emotional connection.”Mackie on set was the definition of an actor in his natural habitat. “Thank you guys for being here, welcome to the sh*tshow, don’t f*ck it up,” he said as he sat down for a roundtable interview. His language was as uncensored as John Doe’s, but his enthusiasm was just as unbridled. Later in the day, during a set tour, his voice could be heard from across the hangar saying, “You just missed me being nice to a beautiful f*cking baby!” as he met with one of the youngest actors on set. Season 1 was filmed in his hometown of New Orleans, but Season 2 moved to Toronto, a change he’s rolled with: “I’ve never met a Canadian who had a bad day,” he said. “I don't take myself too seriously, much like all of Canada. I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy, you know what I mean?”“It's kind of like a blank slate.”Much like Mackie, John has also recently moved. He’s now a resident of New San Francisco, but it’s by no means a seamless transition. “He is hanging out with the regular guys and he's wearing polos and he has to shower,” Mackie said. “He's moved into this structured world, but he still yearns to be the old John, the fun of being the milkman in the wide open space.” Thankfully, he doesn’t have that long to wait, as the allure of Calypso’s tournament is too much to resist.One of the biggest revelations for John at the end of Season 1 was the introduction of Dollface (Tiana Okoye), John’s long-lost sister, whom he forgot about after his bout of amnesia. Now, she’s the leader of a masked band of marauders set to join the tournament herself.Twisted Metal Season 2 introduces John Doe’s sister, Dollface. | Peacock“There’s no strain,” Mackie said of the newfound relationship between the siblings. “It's more so about him just trying to learn, ‘What did I miss for the past 30-odd years?’” In fact, we’ll even get to learn John’s real name. “Season 2 is really asking the question for John: OK, now that you've found family, what does it mean to have a family?” Smith said. “Is it about sacrifice? Is it about fighting for something? Is it about supporting, not taking center stage?”That’s part of what makes Twisted Metal so unique as a series. The original game doesn’t have any backstory for its main character: Like in the show, he suffered from amnesia. “[The game] is just people f*cking people up,” Mackie said. “With us, the fun that we have with this series is creating a reason why you want to f*ck people up. So it's kind of like a blank slate.”The ultimate blank-slate character is Quiet, Stephanie Beatriz’s badass sidekick figure with a dark past of her own. It took a good portion of Season 1 for her to speak, but she eventually went from John’s begrudging passenger, to his paramour, to the love he left behind. Now she’s loud and proud and a part of Dollface’s gang. Beatriz herself is also more confident. She was a new mom during the filming of Season 1, but now her daughter is old enough to understand what she does for a living. “She's not just a larva,” she said. “She’s a real person. She has bits, she has jokes, and she knows that I'm here. We call it the Pretend City.”Quiet has more of a voice in Twisted Metal Season 2. | PeacockIn Season 2, Quiet’s plans are much more lofty than her revenge mission in Season 1. In the trailer for Season 2, she outright says that if she wins Calypso’s tournament, she can get rid of the walls that keep the exclusive cities blocked from the harsh wasteland. “Whatever kind of equality you can get in this post-apocalyptic world, Quiet has her eyes set on it,” Beatriz said. Thankfully, that brings her back to John, but it’s not quite the same fiery dynamic as the two had before. “For lack of a better parallel, [it’s like] what happens when you go away for your first semester of college and you and your high school sweetheart are like, ‘Let's stay together,’” Beatriz said. “But then you see each other for the first time on Christmas break and you're like, ‘You're so different. I don't know, are you still the one?’”The high school metaphor is a lot more literal than you think. “There are quite a few episodes where they're locked into a high school situation in this abandoned high school,” Beatriz revealed. “I don't know if any of you remember high school, but I did not have a good time. The juxtaposition of being in a high school, being a grown-up, it being the apocalypse, being locked into that environment and then also probably having to fight for your life most of the time, produces a lot of conflict between characters.”Car LoversBut in the world of Twisted Metal, behind great characters are even greater cars. John started off with Evelyn and Roadkill, and Sweet Tooth has his ice-cream van, but a tournament needs competitors, and competitors need unique rides. There’s Vermin’s Roach Coach, an old van with a giant cockroach on top of it; Axle, who uses a harness to attach his body to a pair of giant wheels; and Dollface’s fleet of VW Beetles, just to name a few. And so many cars need repairs.So within one of the empty hangars of what used to be the Bombardier factory, production built a fully-functioning auto shop, complete with car lifts and spare parts. Art director Guy Roland, the brains behind many of these designs, took us behind the scenes to see the various cars sourced for the show. “Our biggest approach to cars this season versus last season is really changing the shape of them,” Roland said. “Having them come in with the base and then raising the wheels, spreading the wheels, making them feel meaner, adding more details to the car to make it feel like each car is the character [themselves.]”Every car, like Vermin’s “Roach Coach,” is a reflection of its driver. | PeacockThe shop itself looks like something straight from the show. Strewn throughout the hangar are decals, tools, props, and weapons, all ready to be brought together to create these souped-up rides. Roland took us through the stained-glass windows for Brimstone, the car the Preacher drives in the game. “It’s probably the most badass PT Cruiser we’ve ever seen,” he said as he showed us how they made the car look rusted and aged. “It’s just missing a goat head, which you’ll see on set.”“These guys have been amazing about capturing the details and really sanding the undersides of tables,” MJ Smith said over the roar of power tools. “You may never see some of these details, but [we’re] really making sure that you feel them, even if you don't notice them.” Plenty of the new gear on the cars are Easter eggs for eagle-eyed fans. Even if they’re not named, they’ll be plenty familiar to those in the know.That attention to detail is even more impressive once you realize these cars need to be created many times over. “We have five Roadkills,” Roland said. “That was an early lesson.” Three cars are used for stunts, one is a “pod car” that can be driven remotely so dialogue can be shot on the interior, and then a hero car that’s fully decked out on the exterior and interior. There are also extra cars just there to be mined for parts as needed. “We use every part of the buffalo here,” Roland said.The Fall GuysWhen we were touring the set, production was shooting the very beginning of the tournament, so we were able to see all the vehicles lined up and ready to go. There’s a student driver car complete with a second steering wheel, a “horse girl car,” and Shrapnel, a car that included such sharp metal parts jutting out that tennis balls had to be placed on the points to keep actors from getting cut.Injuries happen, just like in any other production. “I have a huge scar on my left ankle from the first season where I moved across the front of the car too fast and those big, huge spikes just ate the sh*t out of my leg,” Beatriz said. “It’s there forever. I’ll always remember this show.”“We're filming this TV show like a movie.”And Season 2 is, like every aspect of this show, even bigger. “There was probably a day and a half where I was mostly naked,” she revealed. “There was sh*t blowing up. There was a wall on fire, and there was just running through mostly abandoned buildings, trying to not get hit over the head with missiles.”That’s where Twisted Metal’s crack team of stunt performers comes in. When Inverse spoke to stunt coordinator Logan Holladay, he had just walked the red carpet for The Fall Guy, having the illustrious honor of being the stunt double of an actor playing a stunt double. He didn’t really play video games as a kid — he was a little too busy being a professional dirt bike racer at the age of 16, but he knows how to drive better than anyone, be that in a Hollywood blockbuster or a video game TV show.Stunts and explosions are a huge part of Twisted Metal, especially in Season 2. | PeacockSeason 1 made a mark for the no-holds-barred action, and while it’s always possible to go further, stunt work means a constant balance of trying to push the envelope and trying to keep people safe. “We like adrenaline and to push it, but you never want to give too much or too little,” Holladay said. “It's always exactly what the scene calls for.”He used The Fall Guy as an example of the temptation of one-upping stunts. “How many rolls has somebody done in a car? Seven. So we did eight and a half,” he said. “How far has someone jumped in a movie in a vehicle before? It was somewhere under 200, so I did 225.”Twisted Metal may be a smaller production than The Fall Guy, but that same ambition is there. “We've put together some chase sequences right now that would hold up in any platform, any movie, any TV show. We're filming this TV show like a movie with the effort that we're putting into it.”“Let's really take it up a notch.”Across every inch of the set, it was clear that every person who had their fingerprints on Twisted Metal Season 2 would never settle for just OK. Season 1 was even Emmy-nominated for its stunt coordination, but that doesn’t stop every effort to go above and beyond.“This show, more than a lot of other shows, is so interdisciplinary,” Smith said. “Every department has to be involved.” He uses the cars, the central element of the show itself, as an example. “It’s multiple stages. We talk about a design with the art department, we see 3D models, concept art. What’s great about the games is that no car is exactly the same in every game, so that gives us some license. These guys make it real, make sure it’s workable, and then we have the stunt department take it out on the tarmac and put it through its paces.”It’s the perfect example of what makes Season 2 so great: every cog in the machine is working to push itself, and together the cumulative effort creates something far greater than the sum of its rusted, modded, and scraped-together parts. “We did something right,” Smith said. “Now let's just make it bigger. Let's make the car action bigger. Let's make the comedy bigger. Let's make the sets feel even more lived in. Let's really take it up a notch in terms of what we can do with the show and what the show's tone is.”Twisted Metal premieres July 31 on Peacock.