You have to give it up for the fans of Gravity Falls, their unyielding support and love for sophomore Disney animated show has survived numerous hiatuses and scheduling changes, but they still are has devoted and information hungry as ever. This year at San Diego Comic-Con, creator Alex Hirsch took to the stage with voice actor of Mabel Pines, Kristen Schaal, director Matt Braly, and supervising producer Rob Renzetti, who also moderated the panel. Before the panel started, they showed a trailer for the rest of season 2 to the audiences, and based off what we saw it’s easy to say the rest of this season is going to be a wild ride.

 

Panel Highlights

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  Hirsch revealed that the original concept of Bill Cipher was more of a creature that would invade Dipper’s dreams and yell conspiracies at him, the idea that he would just annoy Dipper with false information multiple times throughout the season. Later as they developed the story they thought that for Dipper, who wants to find out the answers, to interact with a character who has the information and won’t tell him anything was such a better, frustrating situation and should be more important to the story.
• Schaal at Mabel’s age was pretty much exactly Mabel; she had lots of unrequited crushes on boys, braces, and wrote lots of stories and poetry.
• When asked if they could “quantum leap” into any of the characters in any of the episodes: Braly said he’d want to be in “Double Dipper” (which he actually storyboarded for the show) so he could clone himself. “How fun would it be to hang out with yourself?” to which Hirsch replied, “and murder himself.” Schaal would want to be in “Boyz Crazy” so she could clone “a hundred million Joey McIntyres” from New Kids on the Block. Hirsch admitted that he would want to be Bill Cipher in “Dreamscaperers,” “because it’s fun to mess with people.” Renzetti would go into “Mabel’s Guide to Fashion” so he could wear all the cool cat face makeup.
• The next two episodes that will air are “Dungeons, Dungeons, & More Dungeons" airs 8/3, and "The Stanchurian Candidate" airs 8/24.

Footage

Things have never been stranger in Gravity Falls after the shocking truth about Grunkle Stan's past is revealed. Season 2 continues on July 13 as Mabel and Dipper battle enemies old and new.

Audience Q&A

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  During the audience questions, Hirsch and Schaal got out puppets of Stan and Mabel, each of whom they respectively voice on the show, so that the puppets/characters could answer some of the questions if needed.
• When asked about coming up with the story and the writing for the episodes Hirsch answered, “It’s both easy and fun, and hard and impossible.[…] One thing we have on Gravity Falls that we don’t have on very many other shows is a big story and continuity.” They don’t come up with the whole story all at once. They have one or two key pieces for things in the future, but those pieces might change as they go. They pretty much try to figure out stuff as they go along. “Just so you know, at one point Gideon was supposed to become Mayor of Gravity Falls. […] Stories change a lot.”
• When they started out writing the show they knew who the author of the journals was, they knew about Grunkle Stan’s secret sibling, and they had an approximate beginning, middle, and end to the story they were trying to tell. Hirsch continued, “I think it’s really important when you craft a mystery; start with a few things you can actually solve. Don’t ask a question at the beginning you don’t know the answers to […] but a the same time allow yourself the organic-ness to say, 'You know what we can adjust our idea [to write a better story.]’”
• Grunkle Stan and Dipper don’t trust anyone, they are very guarded. Mabel and Soos’s first impulse is love whomever they meet. The characters see themselves in other people, “and the level of trust they show other people shows their own sneakiness.” The episode that is airing on 7/13 “A Tale of Two Stans” will delve into the trust dynamics between the characters after the events over the course of the first part of season 2. Is Grunkle Stan to be trusted after he lied to the twins about who he is?
• If they had the chance to experience the summer that the characters go through in the show? Braly answered, “If I’m animated, then heck yes!”

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  Bill Cipher “was born in weirdness and molded by it” but he is not the cause of all the weirdness in Gravity Falls. But Gravity Falls’ weirdness is why it’s so interesting to Bill.
• It is possible that Bill might owe Dipper a favor from the deal that was struck in “Sock Opera.” “Bill likes to play tricks, he likes to hide clues, but Bill also likes to screw people over. He doesn’t necessarily have the code of honor you might hope.” Bill gets away with whatever he can, the next time you see him he will cause chaos.
• The Masonic and Shriner symbols found in the show are kind of a joke from Hirsch, to see how much they could get away with. Hirsch had a kind of fascination with them as a teenager and he incorporated them into the show. The specific objects found in the Mystery Shack are things that Grunkle Stan has acquired from another character, but Hirsch would not reveal more than that.
• Gravity Falls is the epicenter of weird in the universe in the show. Odd things happen in the other parts of the world, but it becomes more and more common the closer you get to Gravity Falls.
• Stan has really acted as a role model for Soos (even though he is the worst role model imaginable), so even though the events of the first half of the season have put him in a sour light, Soos will not forget the good in Stan. Stan genuinely loves Soos and wants to spend time with him, even though he’s rough around the edges about it.
• Hirsch thinks up the ciphers at the end of the episodes pretty much an hour before they ship the episode. They are mostly meant to be hidden easter eggs, sometimes they have little clues. It’s whatever pops out of his head before the show is due.
• There is no plan to release the original pilot of the show. Possibly they will down the line, but there is no intention right now to do it. He did reveal that Justin Roiland was the original voice for the King of the Gnomes.
• It is a coincidence that season 2 is darker then season 1. It has more to due with higher stakes and nothing to do with the change to Disney XD.
• When asked if the twins had developed differently then originally intended, Hirsch talked about how when he originally imagined Dipper he imagined him to be a lot like himself at that age, which was really “in his own head.” They discovered in writing the show that the character can’t really be that way, he needs to make choices “and often mistakes” for them to grow and learn lessons. “So Dipper is both more foolhardy, and braver, and more neurotic, and more open then I was as a kid.”
• With Mabel a lot of the changes just came from the moment they cast Kristen Schaal; the writers just would think “What would Kristen say?” “Even though Mabel acts happy and sunshine-y all the time, she deeply loves her friends and family. It’s not just a casual love, it’s an important love to her. In many ways Mabel is not prepared fro growing up, in a lot of ways. […] The future is a little more daunting for her then she admits.”
• They announces that they will be releasing a book in 2016 that is a replica of the “Journal #3” in the show. It will be 256 pages long; it will have all the pages in it that we’ve seen in the show, more monsters, plus more of the story about how Stanford Pines came to Gravity Falls, and more information that isn’t even in the show.