Chucky Season 3: How Did The Killer Doll Survive Last Season?

Unsurprisingly, Chucky (voiced by Brad Dourif) is still alive as of "Chucky" Season 3, Episode 1. In "Child's Play," viewers learn that Chucky is a serial killer named Charles Lee Ray who transferred his soul into a doll using voodoo magic just before his death. Decades later, the "Chucky" TV series is still a part of the continuity of that first movie, though Charles' soul has inhabited plenty of vessels — both living and inanimate — other than the original Good Guy doll from "Child's Play."

In "Chucky" Season 2, protagonists Jake (Zackary Arthur), Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Lind), and Devon (Björgvin Arnarson) kill various different versions of Chucky, and believe they finally knock off the doll containing the primary incarnation of his soul during the Christmas Eve-set season finale. That episode's final scene, however, reveals that a so-called Belle doll that appears inanimate throughout the season is actually housing a part of Chucky's soul in secret.

"Chucky" Season 3 viewers who don't remember or maybe never watched the brief scene in the Season 2 finale just need to know that Chucky's survival in Season 3 is possible thanks to a portion of his soul that was previously hiding in plain sight.

By the opening of "Chucky" Season 1, Charles Lee Ray's spirit is already split into a few distinct parts, and this remains the case throughout most of Season 2. Eventually, adult "Child's Play" protagonist Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) kills a living doll he thinks contains the original and final portion of Charles' soul. Chucky, however, swaps bodies with his former therapist Dr. Mixter (Rosemary Dunsmore) just before Andy fires his fatal shot and unknowingly kills Mixter instead. Then, Chucky jumps from Mixter's body to another Good Guy doll, which is the incarnation that Lexy kills on Christmas Eve.

Because Jake and his friends kill so many different versions of Chucky — including the one they think he used as his main body — at the start of Season 3, they're entirely unaware that he's still at large. The majority of Season 3, Episode 1, therefore takes place away from its principal protagonists' home in Hackensack, New Jersey, and moves the story to the White House where Chucky — who once again occupies the form of a standard Good Guy doll — now resides.

Whereas Chucky is a powerful magician in the latter half of Season 1 and virtually all of Season 2, the start of Season 3 returns the iconic slasher to his roots — he's haunting an innocent child and targeting the adults around him to satisfy his homicidal desires.