“I can’t speak too much about [the show’s ending] right now, but I will say that what I’ve always said still stands - it is a three-act story,” Amphibia creator Matt Braly tells me ahead of the season three premiere. With Anne Boonchuy and the Planter family set to venture to the human world for the very first time, families will reunite, friends might turn against one another, and the stakes are higher than ever. As the premiere approaches, I caught up with Braly to talk about Amphibia’s history, fan theories, and how the production has come together to make this ambitious season a reality during the pandemic.
“In any three-act story, I strongly believe that the protagonist - in this case Anne - needs to face her past before she can truly resolve her journey,” Braly explains. “I think what’s so exciting about season three is how she's almost a completely different person now, right? She’s changed, she’s entering her old environment and will need to investigate and explore her relationship with her parents.” Returning home is a big theme this time around, with many characters being forced to face the consequences of their absence in the face of families who have either moved on without them or haven’t learned to accept their disappearance in the first place. Losing people has a heavy toll, even in cartoons like this.
“There’s an episode this season - I won’t give too much away, but there are some stories that absolutely deal with the idea that Anne has been gone for almost five months. That has a lasting impact and ripples. We give presentations at the end of each season for the network to say, ‘So here’s where it’s going and here’s what I’m thinking,’ and I was so excited to give this one because the second you see the slide of Hop Pop in his Ninja Turtle outfit you immediately see the appeal. It’s easy to forget because we’ve spent two seasons with them, but the Planters are really just like 15th Century peasants or something, so the idea of them being ripped out of their world and interacting with ours is very, very fun. People will be impressed with how quickly they pick up on things - you’ll see Hop Pop on the iPad pretty quickly.”
Upon being transported to human society, fans began to notice that the characters of Anne Boonchuy, Sasha Waybright, and Marcy Wu were performing feats that shouldn’t really be possible for 13-year-old girls. Anne is seen to be driving in the latest trailer, while her friends are studying for exams and working part-time jobs that would be more akin to high school students. There’s a reason for this: Disney aged them down from the initial pitch.
“They were older in the original pitches,” Braly says. “[Anne, Sasha, and Marcy] were around 15 originally, because it was supposed to feel a bit more like high school than middle school, but we did age them down to better fit the demographic. But the characters never changed. I’ve seen before where fans are like ‘She feels much older,’ but the story is relatively unchanged regardless of them being aged down or up. I did see some comments of people going, ‘She can drive?!’ but in the context of the episode it will definitely make sense.”
Despite the main characters being on the younger side, they are still treated with an element of maturity that children and adults can understand and relate to. The consequences of Anne’s absence and the trauma associated with being pulled away from family and having to fend for your life have been explored in similar shows like The Owl House and Steven Universe, with modern creators willing to challenge young viewers and show how life can be complicated, but it’s worth pushing forward in search of happiness.
For Anne Boonchuy, her journey is set to reach a new milestone as she comes to terms with new responsibilities in her life. “Amphibia really is Anne’s story,” Braly tells me. “You can chart her through season one, season two, season three, and you will see a pretty significant change in growth. All of this time the Planters have been looking after her, but in season three she’s finally looking after them. It’s a complete role reversal that has made her grow up fast. For the first time, she’s a mission-focused character. In season three, Anne is going to be really the driving - oh, driving, there you go - but driving in terms of looking for a way to get back to [Amphibia]. She needs to resolve the conflict with her friends, she needs to finish what she started. Thematically, I’d say that is where her head is at.”
This new season will also delve deeper into Anne’s Thai heritage, and how Braly wanted to transplant some of his own family ideals and personal history into the world of Amphibia. “I’m Thai and I always knew my characters were going to be,” Braly explains. “It’s a feeling of ‘Well if I don’t do it, then nobody else is going to,’ so [Anne] being Thai was always a huge priority for me. When we got into casting Disney handed me a giant pool of Asian-American actors to choose from. When Brenda Song was auditioning I didn’t know she was Thai, and then an exec leaned over to me and went ‘You know, she’s Thai’ and it was really important for me that Anne be Thai. In Season three there’s an episode where they go to Wat Thai, which is a temple in Los Angeles. It’s a cartoon version of it, but it’s pretty accurate, and it’s important to me that stuff like this be really good and really authentic.” Brenda Song is known for a number of roles, including London Tipton in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, if you’re looking to feel a little bit nostalgic.
Braly’s investment in the world of Amphibia is uniquely intimate, which is no surprise given he spent years creating it all. “It’s been such a long ride for me,” he says. “Would you believe that the other day I found the earliest beginning for my pitch process? The document was dated 2015 and I was just about to cry. Like oh my god, that’s so many years ago! Animation takes so much time, and it’s so labor intensive, but I’m so glad to have gotten to this point.”
Whether Amphibia’s third season is its last or not, it will likely be one that is remembered by fans and critics alike when it begins this October. Anne Boonchuy’s parents will be introduced in the earlier episodes as main characters, and the mother will be voiced by none other than Braly’s own - which is just adorable.
“I’m really proud of how Anne’s parents turned out,” Braly says. “I think they’re a love letter to the Thai folks I grew up with. Mr. Boonchuy specifically, who is voiced by Brian Sounalath, brought so much warmth and love to the character. He really feels like one of my uncles or something, and my own mother actually provides the voice for Mrs. Boonchuy. Working with her and bringing them into the project was such a huge highlight for me. It’s just funny because she was just happy to be there, she doesn’t want to be an actress or anything. She’s just like, 'Oh, I get to be in my son’s thing!’ Those two mean a lot to me, even more so Mr. Boonchuy because it’s nice to have an Asian male character in a cartoon who is so fleshed out and developed.”
Amphibia’s second season began and concluded during the pandemic, meaning much of the show’s recent production was done remotely with a team that was used to working alongside one another. But Braly tells me they managed to make things work, and the overwhelming response from fans to the characters, world, and stories the show has managed to tell has kept them energised. “Every little bit of fan art, fanfiction, and fan speculation we see really keeps us going,” he says. “It really has been so uplifting, especially during COVID when it was really hard to stay motivated sometimes.
“It’s been difficult, there was so much problem solving at the beginning [of the pandemic]. One of the things I miss the most is organic interaction. We used to be a team of 30+ creatives who were used to seeing each other every day, bumping into one another and being like, ‘Hey, I’ve got a great idea for this’ or ‘I saw that pitch and I loved it’ and that’s just all gone. In quarantine we’re so compartmentalised. I miss our storyboard pitch meetings where we would all get together and it was a big gas. We would bring treats and the person presenting would do funny voices and we were just all laughing and having a great time. It’s hard to do that in quarantine on Zoom. if everyone laughs it would just blow out the mic, and so we’d all just have to mute ourselves or something.”
Interactive applications like Zoom and Slack have made dynamic interaction between Braly and his team a bit easier, but the lack of chemistry and natural interaction that come with working in a studio together is gone. Despite all this, they’ve still managed to achieve so much. Fan enthusiasm was a big reason for this success, because it kept the team going during their darkest hours even with so many obstacles in their path.
“We see comments all of the time where people say that watching Amphibia helped them get through stuff,” Braly says. “I’ve had people reach out to me and say that kind of thing, and it’s a good reminder. I won’t lie, when COVID hit, or whenever a big catastrophe like this happens, you have that feeling of ‘Should I be doing something else, should I be out there helping out in a different way?’ But I do think stories like this are very important for people and very inspiring. They are necessary, and in the world of entertainment we rely on stories like this to help us get through the tough times.
“COVID messed up conventions, but fandoms have never been more important than they are now. They’re perfect for measuring how successful something is, and getting feedback on your work is one of the most important things for an artist, writer, or whoever. We really do turn to fandoms for constructive feedback - otherwise we’re just creating in a vacuum and that’s never great.”
Obviously we’re TheGamer (no spaces), so I had to ask Braly about the influences from games, anime, and other popular culture that continue to crop up in shows like Amphibia
“Oh my goodness, like it’s impossible not to [make references],” Braly says. “We really wear our influences on our sleeves, and I think my generation of creators even more so. I don’t know who started it - I think it was Steven Universe where I was just like, ‘Everyone is going off!’ Like let’s just put GameCubes in the background or have characters do the Sonic Adventure pose like in Craig in the Creek or something. We’re just sending up signal flares at this point, and I love that because it’s really helped cartoons feel more modern, international, and connected.”
Amphibia season three is coming to Disney Channel on October 2.