Summary

• The Chucky Season 3 finale introduces Wendell Wilkins, the creator of Good Guy dolls, with an unexpected twist involving the Terror Trio.
• John Waters, known for cult films like Pink Flamingos and Hairspray, was an inspired casting choice for the campy character of Wilkins.
• Waters' history in campy and queer art aligns perfectly with the tone of Chucky and adds depth to the show's already great season finale.

Syfy and USA Network's Chucky has been a true gift for fans of the Child's Play franchise. From complex characters to hilarious moments to bonkers (in a fun way!) plot lines to some of the franchise's most brutal and creative kills, every episode has been full of the unexpected. However, the Season 3 finale ramped up the unexpected treats by finally introducing an integral character: Wendell Wilkins, the creator of the Good Guy dolls.

It wasn't just the introduction of the character that was special. To pull off this monumental, somewhat deranged, a little campy, and yet still lovable introduction, Chucky made a perfect casting decision. When the Terror Trio of Devon, Jake, and Lexy came face-to-face with Wendell Wilkins, it needed to make a fun and memorable impact, which is why John Waters was an inspired bit of casting.

Who Is John Waters, aka "The Pope of Trash"?

John Waters is a Baltimore native and an icon of transgressive filmmaking and storytelling, known by many as one of the greatest cult movie directors of all time. He is most widely known for his most mainstream and famous film, Hairspray, originally released in 1988. The 2007 remake opened him up to a new, wider audience and introduced the world to classic songs such as "Good Morning, Baltimore." And while Hairspray is an iconic moment in film history, it's Waters' earlier works that paved the way for underground and proudly "in poor taste" stories.

So-called transgressive cult films like 1972's Pink Flamingos opened up a wide new world of unabashedly queer and counterculture-ingrained storytelling. As part of his self-titled "Trash Trilogy," which also includes 1974's Female Trouble and 1977's Desperate Living, Pink Flamingos centers on the drag queen Divine (friend and frequent John Waters collaborator) as a criminal living under a false name. She encounters a pair of criminals who are jealous of her reputation for trashiness and attempt to challenge her to outdo her in filth. This leads to an escalation of increasingly bizarre, trashy, and often gross situations, cementing Waters proudly as the "Pope of Trash" and the tagline for the film "an exercise in poor taste."

But it's Waters' early works, like Polyester and Mondo Trasho, where he really experiments and pushes boundaries in the name of good movies in bad taste.

In 1990, Waters worked with a young Johnny Depp in a starring role in his genre-bending Cry-Baby, a romantic comedy musical mashup that uses and pushes back on societal taboos. A beloved exploration of subcultures, Cry-Baby is perhaps his second most mainstream film after Hairspray. But it's Waters' early works, like Polyester and Mondo Trasho, where he really experiments and pushes boundaries in the name of good movies in bad taste.

As a queer kid growing up in the 1950s and '60s in Baltimore, Waters always had a taste for subversion, so it's no surprise he would pave the way for fringe filmmaking. And along with those films came a natural inclination for campiness. After all, you can't film Divine's battle of exploitative filth in Pink Flamingos if you take everything too seriously. Now, with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Waters is considered a living legend of an auteur, widely respected and embraced by the mainstream he so long pushed against.

Who Is Wendell Wilkins?

In the Child's Play franchise, the spirit of the murderous Charles Lee Ray (played in the flesh by the iconic voice of Chucky, Brad Dourif) inhabits the infamous Chucky doll, terrorizing a nation at less than knee height. But the Chucky doll was not a singular item. It was actually a mass-produced toy, the Good Guy doll. And the Good Guy dolls had to come from somewhere.

After a stint in the spirit realm, Jake (technically, the spirit of Chucky inhabiting Jake), leads Devon and Lexy to the "one man who can help them." The Terror Trio pulls up on a classically campy creepy gable house surrounded by dead trees in the middle of the night and they knock on an imposing door. The big reveal? Chucky has led them to Wendell Wilkins, the creator of the Good Guy dolls himself.

As Wilkins invites the kids into his creepy house -- including a huge room filled with dolls of all kinds -- he exposition dumps his backstory. It turns out he created the Good Guy doll to bring love and laughter to children after his own 8-year-old son was shot and killed. The Good Guy doll was a way for him to remember his son and honor his life.

What started as a loving tribute, though, became a new notch in the belt of Chucky's horror success, as he now lives in a house full of dolls and is working directly with Chucky and Caroline, Lexy's younger sister who is Chucky's latest partner, and worshipping the evil voodoo magic of Damballa. Wilkins has been working with Chucky this whole time, and he performs a ritual to remove Chucky's spirit from Jake's body and implant him, fittingly, into the original prototype Good Guy doll.

But he doesn't just stop there. Instead of simply swapping Chucky's spirit into the doll and returning Jake to his body, he opts for a delightfully unhinged and over-the-top villain move. In the final moments of the Chucky Season 3 finale, Nica breaks into Wilkins' house and hears small shouts for help. Pulling back a cover on a marionette display, the Terror Trio's fate is revealed: Wilkins has turned the three of them into miniature dolls themselves, trapping them in his shrine of dolls and adding them to his collection so his house is "filled with children's laughter again."

Why John Waters Was the Perfect Casting Choice

The type of campy role that Wilkins' character exudes is perfectly in line with Waters' entire career and adds depth and fun to an already great season finale in an already great show. Chucky as a show -- and the entire Child's Play property -- is unabashedly campy while still delivering on the horror and the gasps, and the role of Wendell Wilkins is especially campy. As such, Wilkins feels tailor-made for John Waters' own history of tongue-in-cheek subversion.

Further, Child's Play creator Don Mancini is a queer man and the stories have always been told through a queer lens. The show's leads, Derek and Jake, are a gay couple. And even back in Season 1, Chucky makes sure to let Jake and the audience know that he has a "genderfluid" child that he loves because he's "not a monster." So Waters' history as an out gay man and work in queer cinema (especially his work with Divine), make him an important and perfect fit for the Chucky TV show universe.

It's a small but memorable role, and clearly one Waters had fun playing.

Of course, this wasn't even his first time in the franchise. In 2004's Seed of Chucky, he had a small part as paparazzi Pete Peters. In an on-the-nose sleazy role, Peters is a photographer who tries to get shots of Jennifer Tilly to sell to the press, following her discovery of a decapitated special effects employee (in reality, the technician was asking too many questions and so Chucky and Tiffany killed him.) He isn't long for this world, as Chucky sets out to kill him, and his time on this Earth ends as sulphuric acid eats away at his flesh. It's a small but memorable role, and clearly one Waters had fun playing.

John Waters' history with campy and queer art and Child's Play's DNA of campy and queer horror go naturally hand-in-hand. These comedic yet boundary-pushing stories make a lasting cultural impact and have a dedicated cult following while never making the mistake of inflating their own self-importance. Because of this, there is no one better to play the internal Father of Chucky than the Pope of Trash himself, John Waters.