How 'Chucky' creator Don Mancini's Catholic upbringing inspired Season 2 of hit USA & SYFY series

In the 34-years since Chucky first started satirizing and terrorizing the horror genre, that possessed doll has tromped through every trope and genre creator Don Mancini could imagine. For Season 2 of SYFY's Chucky series, Mancini is attempting to give Chucky some religion and it's going to go about as well as you might expect. During SYFY's recent TCA day, Mancini told reporters this season is all about digging into the sub genre that is the Catholic-based horror movie, much like The Omen and The Exorcist.

"As a kid, I was raised Catholic, although interestingly, when I was in eighth grade I was sent to an Episcopalian school," Mancini said of what inspired this exploration. "It was really when I went to that school that I learned about aspects of the Catholic church that I actually hadn't been apprised of. For example, the concept of transubstantiation, which is the Catholic belief that during the mass when the priest blesses the host and the wine, it literally transforms into the flesh and blood of Christ. I was like, 'Wait, we are supposed to believe that?' I just found that fascinating."

He continued, "Any religion, I think presupposes a belief in the supernatural. And, so, to have Chucky intersect with that, I think is just really interesting. One of the things we have always found is that Chucky often is at his most entertaining when he is subverting the status quo, and/or going after authority figures, and puncturing the hypocrisies that people or institutions can have. So, this is a fun arena to set Chucky loose in."

As this is the second season of the TV series, Mancini was asked why he thinks this medium particularly lends itself to great Chucky storytelling. He said, "I think that Chucky works well as a television series because for years with the films they already set the precedent of doing serialized, ongoing, narrative storytelling. We have been spinning this continuous web over decades, so to be able to do that now at an accelerated pace, and to go through eight hours of story per season, that's really exciting. It allows us to get more into character's history, and relationships, and go down different avenues and explore characters that fans have been wanting to know more about."

For example, Mancini said that in an upcoming Season 2 story the characters of Glen and Glenda from 1998's Bride of Chucky will finally return. "Fans have been wanting to know about that since 2004." He added that the YA element of the series is also is a "good fit" for Chucky storytelling. "Aesthetically, we love to do over the top stylistically, with grandiose visual stuff. And I think that's the way teenagers emotions work. Teenagers emotions are over the top and big. Everything is incredibly vivid, so, I think that our franchise is a great fit for that."

Chucky Season premieres on USA and SYFY on Oct. 5.