Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to watch the first half of Pretty Little Liars: Summer School, the much-anticipated follow-up to Original Sin. I was a huge fan of Original Sin, so when I was offered a spot in the Summer School press junket, I jumped right on that. I had the chance to sit down and chat with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Lindsay Calhoon Bring, and Annabeth Gish for a few minutes. We had a wonderful conversation!

An Interview with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Lindsay Calhoon Bring and Annabeth Gish

Brendan Jesus: Like Original Sin, Summer School is chock full of references and homages, from a very great visual homage to The Exorcist III hallway scene to a passing comment about Randy Meeks and Scream 2. Since you explicitly mentioned Randy, I’m curious if you took any of his ‘sequel’ notes into the writer’s room.

Lindsay Calhoon Bring: You know what, in our writer’s room, if we’re ever taking a break–we had a TV in the writer’s room–one of our favorite things to do was watch a trailer or watch an old horror movie. One of the scenes we pulled up for Tabby was Randy walking everyone through the rules of horror movies. We thought it was so Tabby’s energy. Later in the season, Tabby really is our sort of cross between Dawson and Randy Meeks, she kind of walks us through a list of suspects, who they could be and why, and it definitely is in line, and tone, with that Randy Meeks energy for sure. 

BJ: Throughout the first few episodes, it’s clear Imogen has sort of a crisis of character. With as much as you can go into this, did her character mirror the process of creating this season? By that I mean, did you feel like Summer School needed to exist as its own entity? To exist as its own grand idea?

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: It’s funny, you’re totally circling something Lindsay and I spent a lot of time talking about before starting the writer’s room. We definitely wanted the second season, the sequel season, to feel different, to have a different theme, vibe, and horror villain. But, we 100% wanted to continue the emotional storylines from Season 1 and to not do a hard reset. We said, whatever stories we’re telling in Season 2, we cannot forget the trauma the girls went through in Season 1. They were terrorized by a guy in a mask with a knife! Specifically that Imogen and Tabby were dealing with the shared trauma of sexual assault. We didn’t want to say, “They’re all good, fresh start.” The secret thematic story of Season 2 was these girls working through their traumas. We wanted to give them someone to talk to, so who better than Dr. Sullivan from the OG Pretty Little Liars? It was finding that balance of new story, new villain, new franchise, but keeping that emotional and thematic continuity from Season 1, which we loved doing! We loved the challenge of that. 

BJ: When it comes to creating projects, reality will always differ from expectation. For the three of you, what do you think will scare audiences most? For me, I’ve already had some nightmares about the masks. 

Annabeth Gish: That mask did a number on me, I’ll say. When I had to shoot that scene, and it was in that sort of floating head form, it was terrifying! And I’ve been around some horror sets. That one crept into my dreamscape as well. 

Lindsay Calhoon Bring: A classic for me in horror, and we’re all such huge horror fans. It’s my sort of anxiety dream, which circles Imogen, right? We know she’s struggling with her mental health, and our villain is preying on that. But a constant anxiety dream for me is being chased. And I think there’s nothing better in a horror movie, especially a summer horror movie, than to have an epic terrifying chase. I think we deliver on that really amazingly in Episode 5 with Maia Reficco’s barefoot chase in the woods. That really turned out amazing and is pretty pulse-pounding. I hope that it will scare people!

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: To your point, and what we mentioned a little bit when we were coming up with Bloody Rose, and knowing this was sequel season, we were inspired by horror movie sequels. One of them, that really inspired the look of Bloody Rose, was the character of Julia Cotton in Hellraiser II. No skin on her face, in a blue diaphanous evening gown, wafting through a hellscape. There’s something about someone who’s had their face skin, with their face wrapped and covered in blood with a crown of thorns–that felt very apocalyptic and primal. That idea, the mother as a primal destructive force, is wrathful and terrifying. 

Annabeth Gish: And pagan, almost!

A big thanks to Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Lindsay Calhoon Bring, and Annabeth Gish for taking the time to chat with me, and if you don’t have Summer School on your radar, go binge the first season on Max! You won’t want to miss this season.

Chucky has always been a coverage priority for us here at Horror Press, with full episode-by-episode recaps having a home on this site from the outset (and they’re pretty comprehensive ones, so if you need a refresher, be sure to check them out). But lately, the focus on Chucky for fans hasn’t been on the existing episodes but on ones that haven’t been made yet. 

Will Chucky the TV Series be Renewed?

Following the season finale on May 1st, the cast and crew of Chucky have taken to Twitter and Instagram with #RenewChucky, calling for fans to make their voice heard on getting the SyFy original series renewed for a fourth season. Just as the show explored the space between life and death in its third season, the state of Charles Lee Ray’s television future is in a foggy spirit realm of its own; over a week later, and the network has been sparse in its response to calls to get the show back.  

So as the #RenewChucky movement reaches a swell among fans, and calls come in for the killer doll of the people to bring a tidal wave of blood across America once more, it’s evident that we don’t just want a Season 4—we need a season 4 for a more satisfying closer. 

Major spoilers ahead for everything in Chucky Season 3. Reader discretion is advised. 

CHUCKY SEASON 3 TAKES THE LEAP OF FAITH…

Season 3 was first and foremost a season of great concepts and fun moments. Many of them hinge on the series’ willingness to go out on a limb and try something odd, which is a strength despite some wishing for a straightforward and back-to-basics approach with Chucky. And what were these major moves exactly? Well, the most important ones:

·Taking the action to the inner sanctum of the White House

·Said White House being a locus of spiritual energy filled with ghosts

·A shadow government covering up Chucky’s crimes

·Chucky being given an expiration date by the voodoo god Damballa and left to die permanently

·And (what many will recognize as the MVP of the season plot-wise) putting Tiffany through her paces with some jailhouse antics before her impending execution 

That’s not even mentioning that the finale is mostly a ghost battle in the afterlife where Jake tries to get Chucky’s spirit to destroy itself, which backfires and lets the doll take his body for a joyride. All of this is what prime Chucky should look like. These are the off-the-wall inventions of Don Mancini that made us love the franchise in the first place; they’re adventurous and different from everything that comes before them.

That and all the insane kills this season had just ripped. 

Rest in peace to Sarah Sherman’s face, that was NASTY nasty. 

…BUT LANDS BACK IN THE USUAL BUSINESS 

But the trick of Season 3 that makes it less than satisfying is serving a lot of high-stakes crazy plot points, and ultimately, not keeping the mad momentum. Chucky dies permanently—until he doesn’t. Nica gets to see her victory over Tiffany—until she doesn’t. And Jake is trapped in the spirit realm with Chucky piloting his body and torturing his loved ones—until he isn’t. We’re given what I think is a really good meal, but the plate is taken on the last few bites and replaced with leftovers. And leftovers are great, but this weird chicken dish you were serving was even better. 

I don’t expect Mancini and Company to permanently kill off some of the most beloved characters in horror history for a whammy ending when there are plenty more wild and weird stories to be told with them. I want those stories! But the endings for these characters in Season 3 felt like the safest options, which runs counter to everything we’ve seen. Chucky murders dozens of people in one of the most secure places on earth, kills the President, launches an ICBM to the North Pole, and then becomes a White House ghost with blood-bending magic. 

And then…

He is a doll again.

IT COULD BE THE END, FRIEND—BUT IT WOULDN’T BE THE ONE IT DESERVES

I’m by no means saying to retire the character permanently. But as far as wrapping up the show and finishing the Hackensack Cycle in Chucky’s spanning saga, it felt like being sent back to the drawing board. It takes the ethos of Season 3’s much more experimental supernatural angle and treats it as a pit stop. Chucky and Tiffany ride off into the sunset with renewed vows to do no good together, and of course, Nica and the Hackensack gang (now possessing marionette bodies) are smacked with the cosmic irony frying pan and forced to hunt them down all over again. 

Nica might very well be the best example of why Season 3 can’t be the end—the character who has been put through the wringer, isolated, tortured, and is always snatching defeat from the jaws of victory cannot die in a dollmaker’s house as an afterthought to Chucky and Tiffany. Nica’s story is one with a streak of oppressively dark humor. Whether it ends with her triumphing or meeting a grisly end, it must happen on the main stage, not as the cliffhanger for a single television season. When the ending to Chucky comes, we want it to be definite, and we want it to go out with the wild and inventive bang that these characters deserve. 

#RenewChucky has to succeed. We, as fans, have made ourselves abundantly clear—we love this show. And loving it means recognizing that it shouldn’t end on this note. So here’s to Andy, Nica, Tiffany, Devon, and every other character we love getting another shot at syndication. Here’s to Don Mancini finding newer, more terrible ways to kill Devon Sawa and Michael Therriault. Here’s to a Chucky Season 4.