‘Chucky’ Season 2: How Lachlan Watson Developed Campy Weirdness and Accurate Representation for Non-Binary Glen/Glenda
The horror series Chucky Season 2 continues and revamps the long-beloved movie franchise created by Don Mancini. While Chucky continues to ruin the lives of the main characters in the new season, fans get to meet two long-overdue characters. Glen/Glenda was the spawn of Chucky and Tiffany in Bride of Chucky, who transferred their souls into twin children. Actor Lachlan Watson stars and introduces the LGBTQ characters of Glen/Glenda in Chucky Season 2 and how they approached the characters.
[SPOILER ALERT: Mild spoilers ahead regarding Chucky Season 2.]
Fans finally meet adult version of Glen and Glenda in ‘Chucky’ Season 2
The series’s second season has been full of fun treats for fans, from the return of franchise characters, the demise of others, and Devon Sawa defying his characters’ death in the first season. But fans were more eager to see the grand reveal of Glen and Glenda. While teased in the trailers, the dynamic twins got their big introduction in “Death on Denial.”
In the original movie, Glen was a sweet and sincere doll with a double persona as a female named Glenda. His more feminine side did have the bloody tendencies of their father, Chucky. In the movie’s finale, fans see only Glen as a human child. This time around, fans get a bigger picture as older versions of Glen and Glenda arrive at their mother’s home for their birthday.
Like the movie, Glen and Glenda are part of the LGBTQ community as non-binary twins. The episode gleefully and naturally plays into the aspect of the characters when they tell their mother they are both dating a man named Paul. Both characters sport a more gothic persona, with Glen having long hair and Glenda with a buzz cut. The episode even adds a small scene where Jennifer’s “butler” cannot help but stare at the twins, but they admit it is normal for them.
The characters are everything fans could have hoped for and more. Chucky Season 2 actor Lachlan Watson breaks down how they wanted to portray Glen and Glenda on screen as non-binary.
Glen/Glenda steer away from ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ in ‘Chucky’ Season 2
In an interview with Them, Watson explains their first double-character role. The actor gained fame as the transgender character of Theo Putnam in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Watson identifies as non-binary with they/them pronouns and brings their own experience to playing Glen/Glenda in Chucky Season 2. When it came time to portray the non-binary characters, Watson had difficulty finding the correct way to describe them.
“In the beginning, everyone, including myself, was describing Glen and Glenda as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine.’ And that was really the only verbiage that people would use to describe them. Having been an out nonbinary person living pretty much free of those terms for the last four or five years of my life, that was jarring,” explained Watson. The actor questioned what it meant to be feminine, masculine, and words associated with gender norms.
In the end, Lachlan realized, “There are so many different ways to be masculine or feminine.” They soon decided they needed to change the narrative and the “outdated” vocabulary during costume fitting. “We wanted them to be their unique mix, like people are, and like trans people are,” explained Lachlan.
Lachlan and the team developed a “delicious” way to bring Glen/Glenda to life in Chucky Season 2. “Eventually, we threw out [the terms “masculine” and “feminine”], and I came up with different ways to describe them, which is that Glenda is more ‘glam’ and Glen is more ‘grunge.'”
Lachlan Watson gets to break free playing Glen/Glenda
Horror fans can agree that the Chucky franchise reinvented its style of the genre. Besides a killer doll, Don Mancini set out to break the norms and include an LGBTQ narrative. Fans continue to see that in the Chucky series with its leading characters, Jake and Devon, who dive into a relationship.
Unlike Sabrina, Lachlan explains Chucky has always been on the edge and open to an LGBTQ story. “It made its legacy on being this queer, campy, anything-goes environment. And so finally, I was able to just bust free and have fun inside horror,” explained the actor. Fans finally get to see the inner working of Glen/Glenda in Chucky Season 2 as Lachlan explains in a SyFy featurette, “there’s no one way to be trans, or there’s no one way to be human.”
