The Tales of Arcadia saga comes to an end this Friday on Netflix with the debut of the 10-episode limited series Wizards. Like Trollhunters and 3Below, this third installment in the series once again comes from Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro. Emmy-winning executive producers and story editors Chad Quandt and Aaron Waltke discuss their time with the franchise and putting together this grand finale.

Jackson Murphy: You guys wrote on Trollhunters, and it was an instant hit. Everywhere I looked online, everybody was talking about this show immediately. When did you realize, ‘Gee, I’m a part of something BIG’?

Chad Quandt: (laughs) Maybe this interview with that glowing review. We knew we were into something big as soon as we heard Guillermo’s name, being giant fans of his work. Even if the show wasn’t gonna be a big hit, we knew we were part of something very special to work with this “master” as he was stepping into a full animated series. The real, first thing though was maybe after Trollhunters started to come out and Aaron and I saw some of our first fan music video edits.

JM: Nice. At what point did you find out that you were gonna be part of Wizards?

Aaron Waltke: As Trollhunters was winding down, we weren’t sure yet when/how Tales of Arcadia would continue. Chad and I were offered the opportunity to work on a spinoff of The LEGO Movie for Cartoon Network called Unikitty. We went and worked on that as story editors and head writers, and just as that was winding down, Wizards was winding up. And they asked if we’d be willing to come back and run the writers’ room and co-showrun. Obviously we were honored and excited for the opportunity to dive back into this world. As much as we loved being on the creative team, we’re also just fans of the show. Writing for these characters is as much like re-visiting old friends and family as it is writing a cartoon show. It was tremendously exciting, especially with the opportunity… with the technology and the talent that Tales of Arcadia has accrued… we were able to go deeper and bigger and grander in scope and scale and depth of emotion. It was truly a phenomenal experience.

JM: Have you always been fascinated with magic, King Arthur and Merlin?

CQ: Yeah. You almost have to learn about Arthurian legends even in school. Getting to see the different depictions of Morgana and Arthur – if you’re watching enough cartoons and adventure series, you kind of get this very blurry picture of these legends, depending on what you’re watching. Getting to put our own spin or take on these mythological and characters and do it through the lens of what these kids are seeing… that was more important to us.

JM: This is a one-season show. You’ve got one shot to make this as good as it can be. Did you plan out the entire series at the beginning down to the detail?

AW: The short answer is yes-ish. When you’re dealing with such a challenge as trying to tell a story you want to tell in a limited series, we had to re-think our approach. With Trollhunters, we had 52 episodes to explore. There was a narrative thread going through it but you could have these little explorations. In this case, we have 10 episodes and that’s all it will ever be. We really dove in and crunched. And before we went pen to paper, we meticulously went through with Guillermo with ideas of character arcs. We took a very novelistic approach. We had so many characters and things we knew we wanted to see, instead of it being loose… every episode, we had four or five storylines that we had to intricately weave in and out of one another. As crazy at that sounds, it did pay off. That being said, there were plenty of hidden surprises… as we were writing and exploring characters, they kind of told us where to go.

JM: And as story editors, when you’re making tough decisions (maybe on the fly) is it even tougher to do that when you’re working with this visionary, Guillermo del Toro? Do you go up and say, “Hey Guillermo, can we change this – can we alter this?”

CQ: (laughs) It’s definitely intimidating to approach the throne, so to speak. But Guillermo has always been really generous. Even when he is weighing in on some story that we’ve broken out already and he’s like, ‘Yeah, this isn’t gonna work. We need to do this instead.’, he’s very nice about it. You’re never mad at a Guillermo note because it always makes the story better. Guillermo will definitely hear you out if there’s something to the story that’s speaking very strongly to us or you have a new idea or take on the character. Wizards was a very collaborative effort with the master himself… and it was a really rewarding experience.

JM: Kelsey Grammer is back as Blinky. How was it for Kelsey to come-in and now also voice the younger version of this character that he won an Emmy for a few years ago?

AW: In the room, even way back on Trollhunters, we always had this joke: anytime that we had to get something out that was a long speech or exposition, we were like, ‘Just give it to Kelsey because he will make it like chocolate running over your eardrums.’ Everything he says is great and instantly sells your line and makes it a million times better. Speaking to the Blinky of it all, it was a really fun challenge… to see all these characters, but we’ve now gone back to their origin stories. Blinky in the present was very erudite and gentile, but it was fun to see him play a younger version of himself where he was more of a coward. It was really fun to see Kelsey take on that challenge. [He] completely nailed it.

JM: That’s great. What’s really impressive about these Wizards episodes are the visuals. The colors come through so loudly in the nighttime action sequences. And I bet that’s hard to do. There’s one in the first episode, “Spellbound”. What kind of preparation goes into a scene like that?

CQ: I wanna first give a shout-out and love to all of our amazing designers and production teams. We were talking from the very beginning with our art departments about these set pieces and iconic views that we wanted Wizards to represent. Even more thought has gone into it that might not even necessarily be apparent. Early on, Aaron and I went over with the design team the language of every person’s magic on the show – that it has a distinct color palette and style to it. So when you have these big, gigantic, chaotic sky battles, they’ll look amazing and you’ll be able to tell what’s going on by everyone having their unique voice to their magic. There’s thought to the lure and the logic.

JM: In the second episode, “History in the Making”, Douxie sees double. How fun was it putting those scenes together?

AW: It was really fun. His arc… he’s someone who thinks he’s already gone through that hero’s journey – that he’s already ready. It’s fun for him to be thrown back and confront the person that he thought that he had gotten over. Even though he projects himself as this cool, calm, collected, “got it all figured out” guy now, it’s a bit like if you met yourself in Freshman year of high school. He’s a little bit dorkier but ultimately Douxie realizes that even he has a lot left to learn. And Colin O’Donoghue did a tremendous job playing both roles.

JM: You each won an Emmy in 2018 for writing on Trollhunters. Take me back to that night… a time when people actually went to awards shows.

AW: (laughs) The olden times!

CQ: That is so long ago. I wasn’t sure that they actually said Trollhunters when they said it. I was like, ‘They must’ve misspoke.’ And the fear of being that guy who runs up to accept an award he didn’t win was too present in my mind. I think we were all blown away. It was a really sweet endorsement from the animation community back. For some of us, this was our first step into the animation industry. And other people on our team are huge vets – titans of the industry. To get that thumbs up, which is a very simple way to call an Emmy, from our peers, was beyond an honor.

AW: It really was sort of a delirium. It all goes by so quickly. And it doesn’t really sink in until you’re able to plug your phone back in and then you wake up to 5,000 messages from everyone, many of them fans just excited that their favorite show was getting some acknowledgment. That, in many ways, meant just as much, if not more. The fan community exploded and just kept getting bigger and more creative. Winning an Emmy is super cool, but the fact that our fans were so excited about it meant a lot to me.

JM: Honestly, what are you going to miss the most about this Tales of Arcadia saga in your life?

CQ: Oh, wow. Good question.

AW: It’s an emotional question. I think I would be remiss if I didn’t say that Tales of Arcadia changed our lives. The amount of incredibly talented people who are so generous with their time and their craft and their abilities – and the people who believed in us and gave us the opportunity to play in this playground. To collaborate with our storytelling hero of Guillermo del Toro. It was beyond an honor and a privilege. And I’m immensely proud of the fact that we’re able to tell a story that connected with so many people on so many levels. I’m very excited and perhaps a little bittersweet to see it go. But that’s what Tales of Arcadia does best, isn’t it?

CQ: These characters have been in our heads and hearts for the better part of a decade. There’s not been a week going where we haven’t been thinking about stories for these characters until we wrapped on Wizards. Even when we left Trollhunters, these characters were in our hearts and minds. Getting to say goodbye to them in this way on Wizards is a huge honor, but… there’s more cool story coming.