Recap: We Learn Why Chucky Is in the White House and What's Up with Tiffany in "Jennifer's Body"
The third episode of Season 3 reveals how Chucky got into the White House and catches up with Tiffany, too.
This story contains spoilers for Chucky Season 3, Episode 3, "Jennifer's Body."
Finally, after two episodes of Chucky wisecracking in the West Wing, we’ve learned how he got into the White House in the first place following the bloody events of the Season 2 finale. And, episode three of the ongoing third season, “Jennifer's Body,” also shows what Tiffany Valentine (Jennifer Tilly) has been up to over the past several months.
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So far, Season 3 has taken place in the lead up to Halloween, but this episode flashes back to “last January,” where we see Chucky (Brad Dourif) interrupt Tiffany’s attempted Voodoo ritual. If he wanted revenge on his ex, he doesn’t get it, because police storm through the door and arrest Tiffany — who everyone thinks is Jennifer Tilly — for murder in the first degree. Nica (Fiona Dourif) is happily watching when the police escort Tiffany into the station, but then she spies Chucky (who went limp to avoid suspicion from the cops) in Caroline’s arms. Nica chases after them, but she’s unable to follow the pair in her wheelchair when they go down some stairs into the subway.
A Kenan Thompson Cameo
Chucky and Caroline next get into a cab driven by Saturday Night Live’s Kenan Thompson. At first, he’s amused by Chucky, assuming he’s “one of those A.I. interactive robot dolls for lonely kids.” But, as Chucky and Caroline discuss their plans to “pay some old friends a vist” and kill them (including, eventually, Caroline’s first-grade teacher Mrs. Sherman, whom she never liked), Kenan gets weirded out. When he pulls over to kick them out of his cab, Chucky reclines the driver’s seat and shoves an umbrella down Kenan’s throat, suffocating the cabbie and impaling his internal organs before opening the umbrella up and exploding Kenan’s throat. (It’s at this time, when the camera is showing his dead, desecrated face, that the opening credits introduce “special guest star Kenan Thompson,” in a very funny bit of timing.)
We next see Chucky when he ties up Andy Barclay — Chucky’s first enemy ever since he was a little kid in the original Child’s Play — and violently stabs him to death in his home. It all seems a little easy, and it is. Chucky was only dreaming about murdering his hated foe, and when he wakes up he discovers that he’s losing hair. That’s not something that’s supposed to happen to a supernatural living doll, nor are the wrinkles he finds under his eyes the next morning. Caroline, who has read the Voodoo for Dummies book they swiped from Tiffany, says that Chucky needs to see a doctor.
What's wrong with Chucky?
It turns out that witch doctors and voodoo specialists in the Chucky world are basically just like normal doctors, with offices and waiting rooms and everything. The doc asks Chucky if he’s been practicing any other religions, and Chucky admits that he was involved in an exorcism last year (read: in Chucky Season 2). That’s bad news, as the doctor tells Chucky that he’s been infected with Christian magic — specifically Catholicism. Herbs can’t help and Chucky can’t just jump into a new body, as Damballa has abandoned Chucky. This is his last vessel, and only a ritual that hasn’t been attempted since the Crusades (and it failed, then) can save him. This ritual requires an evil of a magnitude that the doctor says even Chucky can’t comprehend.
He clearly doesn’t know Chucky.
So why is Chucky killing people in the White House?
In order to rid himself of the Catholic magic and get back in Damballa’s good (er, evil?) graces, Chucky needs to sacrifice six people inside of an evil house. So, Chucky heads to Amityville, New York, where he and Caroline swing by a party that’s being held in the infamous Amityville Horror House. (“The most evil houses are always Dutch Colonials,” Chucky explains. “Think about it. Amityville, Elm Street, Twin Peaks — what the f--k is up with the Dutch?”) We don’t see Chucky murdering the partygoers, but we do see the bloody, bloody aftermath. However, the ritual doesn’t work, and Chucky concludes that it’s because the house isn’t evil enough.
The White House, though, is evil enough — not because of the number of people who have died in its walls (though there have been deaths inside of it) — but because millions of people have died because of decisions made inside it. Chucky and Caroline realize that one of President Collin's sons, Henry (Callum Vinson), who is mourning his dead brother Joseph, is their ticket into the Oval Office. Chucky hides out behind Joseph’s grave, and when Henry spots him and hears the doll introduce himself as “Jospeh, and I’m your friend till the end,” he smiles for the first time in months. First Lady Charlotte (Lara Jean Chorostecki) says that he can keep the doll, and the White House security team is weirdly unbothered by the fact that this doll appears to have a skeleton when they run it through the X-ray machine. Chucky’s in.
However, Caroline is not. She helped Chucky get prepared for the White House, including putting makeup on to hide his wrinkles, but she can’t come inside with him. That makes her sad — and it seems like it makes Chucky sad, too. Caroline’s going to miss Chucky, and Chucky seems to be feeling (gasp) paternal love toward Caroline. We still don’t know where Caroline is in the present day, but Chucky appears to have a soft spot for her, which would be a new development.
RELATED: Heads Roll & Chucky Gets Creative with the American Flag in Season 3, Episode 2
Enter: Tiffany Valentine
Meanwhile, Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Lind) doesn’t know where Caroline is, either, and we see her visit Tiffany in prison in May in an attempt to track down her sister. Tiffany explains that she’s facing trial for murder in the state of Texas because she killed a tour guide at the Alamo. She doesn’t know where Caroline is now, but she lets it slip that Chucky is still alive because he was actually the Belle doll in drag.
Lexy is, understandably, upset to learn that Chucky still lives.
The action then cuts to June, when we see Lexy, Jake (Zackary Arthur), Devon (Bjorgvin Arnarson), and Nica all testify against Tiffany. Although, legally, they’re testifying against Jennifer Tilly, because nobody believes her crazy story that she’s not actually the actress but a serial killer’s ex who was electrocuted, had her soul transferred to a doll, and then transferred into an Academy Award-nominated actress who happens to look just like her. (Her attorney is trying to get her off for reason of insanity, claiming that actors sometimes get too into roles. “I call it the Austin Butler effect,” she says.)
It doesn’t work. Tiffany is sentenced to death by lethal injection for 123 counts of murder in the first degree. Nica — who tells Tiffany after the sentencing that she talks to Tiffany and Chucky's child, GG, every day to really add insult the injury — promises that she will be there when Tiffany dies and that she will roll her chair all over her grave. Tiffany seems a little bit shook by Nica’s vindictivness, but, then again, she did kidnap, torture, and dismember her.
So, now we know how we got to where we are in Season 3. Chucky is in the White House because he needs to kill six people within its evil walls. (That’s what he was counting down to in the last episode.) Tiffany is headed to death row. And Jake, Devon, and Lexy are headed to the White House Halloween party. Should be a bloody one.
New episodes of Chucky Season 3 air on SYFY and USA Network at 9 p.m. ET/PT, streaming the next day on Peacock, followed by new episodes of SurrealEstate at 10 p.m. ET/PT on SYFY.