Mild spoilers follow for those of you who haven't finished the first season of Trollhunters.

DreamWorks Animation's and Netflix's Trollhunters wouldn't be possible without the creative vision and deeply mythological imagination of Guillermo del Toro. During our recent interview, in typical del Toro fashion, the show's creator was quick to praise the many-headed team of writers, producers, animators, and actors behind the scenes of the ambitious animated adventure series, as well as the legions of fans who have embraced the citizens of Arcadia and the denizens of Troll Market with fervor.

While chatting with del Toro about Trollhunters, the conversation also turned to his passion for animation and his plans to get more involved in the medium in the future. We previously brought you his exciting update on the planned stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio, but today we have more from the creator of Trollhunters on its success and the future of the show that's on pace to be Netflix's most-watched original kids series ever. For fans of GDT and animation, this is a must-read.

trollhunters-image-jim
Image via DreamWorks TV

Though he's well known for his fantasy films that are chock full of magical realism, the medium of animation provides so many more creative opportunities for del Toro & company. Far from using animation as a storytelling crutch, the team actively and ambitiously pushed the limits in order to tell the story their way:

When a story connects so strong, it makes a huge difference in the way … you feel validated, and you feel appreciated and received that people are connecting with the message that you had or an idea you had. We were going for things that were not safe bets at all. We created a series that was lit incredibly dark, visually, very dark, very live-action lightning, but made it unique. We were not lighting it like a sitcom, we were very bold and adventurous. We wanted to be very ambitious. We have an incredible amount of freedom creatively, and we kept saying, “If you give us freedom, we’ll deliver.” The audience is going to recognize how genuine and how heartfelt and real and important this series is to us. But, of course, you never know if that is completely real, but now I’m very happy that we have an occasion which we were doing also non-ironic, not post-modern, but really rousing, heartfelt, almost romantic, clean adventures for the whole family, and it connected. It was a risky enterprise, but it paid off.

trollhunters-season-2
Image via DreamWorks TV

Part of the ambitious approach to Trollhunters had to do with making the animated characters appear as real and as alive as possible:

We tried to, within the fantastic, we tried to emphasize the real. We did it also in the sense that one of the main antagonists in the series becomes a good guy at the end. He doesn’t become a complete good guy, but he’s a guy who changes his heart. We do it visually by lighting the series like a live-action movie, we do it in animation by making the characters … we animate the characters making mistakes. They try to close a microwave oven, they fail, they do it again and they get it. Jim tries to get a pea in his mouth and he fails. The series is full of those moments. All of that adds up to it feeling alive and not being a series dictated by comedy.

 

When you watch [Hayao] Miyazaki or a beautiful animated movie like A Letter to Momo, this is something that the Japanese do a lot in the higher quality animation, which I think Miyazaki calls “Ma.” When you do Ma, the characters seem a little more alive. These are decisions that affect the quality of a series without affecting it to go over budget; you can stay on-budget but be creatively a little crazier, and the result is actually a little better.

trollhunters-season-3-marc-guggenheim-interview
Image via DreamWorks TV

Del Toro's live-action films have been received with equal parts cheers and jeers, but he says that the overwhelming majority of social media messages he receives for Trollhunters are positive. It only takes a brief look at his Twitter timeline to see how much he loves sharing the fandom's enthusiasm (and art) for the show, but what he shares is just a fraction of what he receives. With so much positive buzz around Trollhunters, the most obvious questions concern a Season 2 renewal.

We’re not able to discuss anything right now, but hopefully soon enough. The show is on its way to being the most-watched original kids’ show ever on Netflix. That is good news for everyone.

And while Netflix might have clamped down on any announcements for the moment, del Toro did confirm returning cast members:

There’s a lot of movement in terms of casting voices, and so forth.

 

Every single character is coming back with their original voices. We had that from the get-go. And not only that, everybody who worked on the first season loved it, everybody had a great time in every department. A lot of us had nightmarish moments because our vision always exceeded our budget, but we were able to survive and stay completely on budget and deliver a series that looks and feels much bigger, so now, I hope we’re up for great news!

trollhunters-season-2
Images via Netflix

It remains to be seen just how much voice work the late actor Anton Yelchin, who stars in the lead role of Jim, was able to complete; no shortlists or announcements for his eventual replacements have been made just yet.

As for any newcomers in a potential Season 2, that remains to be seen. One thing you can count on is that Jim Lake, Sr. will not be making an appearance, though the writers did consider it:

Yeah, yeah, of course we did. Some of the writers, the Hageman Brothers, fought really hard with me because they wanted the father to be tied to the mythology. I kept saying, “Absolutely not,” because I really think … my fascination with storytelling is that there must be things in storytelling that don’t pay off. Things that always pay off are a certain type of movie or a certain type of storytelling, but it’s not necessarily the type of storytelling I love the most, you know? I think the storytelling I like the most is the one that leaves things ending, like what happens in life. A family fights one night and two uncles never speak to each other again, and that’s it; there’s no resolution. The father left, and he left. I didn’t want the father to show up and he turns out to be a knight and he was a Trollhunter, too. No. He left with a young instructor. [laughs]

guillermo-del-toro-trollhunters-season-2
Images via Netflix

In the meantime, however, del Toro has been enjoying the reaction from fans, especially the incredible artwork they've shared:

 The thing that is the most amazing with fan art is how good the artists are. I think some people put their own spin on the characters and they make them either more gnarly or more cute, but in both sides of the dial, their stuff is fantastic. You get art from kids that want to study animation that are just as good as the people working on animation. I think everybody loves the characters that we love the most—Gnome Chompsky, Blinky, Aaarrrgghh, Jim, Claire, Toby—I’m particularly proud of Toby because we made him look like me. We both have trouble putting our socks on.

There are a lot of moments to love in Trollhunters; here's what del Toro marks as his favorites:

We always knew there were going to be bittersweet moments, and those are my favorites. In terms of adventure, there is no better moment for me … there’s a fist-bump moment when Jim calls for his amulet in the woods and the amulet flies to him, that is for me as good a moment as I could ever expect it to be.

 

There’s an episode, six, a really touching turn for the character of Draal, which has been a heavy up until then, and then has a really beautiful moment of conciliation and friendship with Jim. And then there’s a moment, without going into spoilers, in which Jim chooses not to reveal who he is to his mother to keep her safe, but knowing very well that he will always be true to who he is. It’s sort of a very bittersweet moment in which the hero has to hide the truth but be true to himself.

trollhunters-season-2
Image via Netflix

If you want to keep up with del Toro's love of animation and his take on the current state of the medium, here's a good place to start:

What surprises me about Goro Miyazaki is, from one feature to the next, I thought he has gotten exponentially better. I thought he was starting to come into his own. I think the non-Miyazaki, non-[Isao] Takahata animation at [Studio] Ghibli was finding a very everyday life tone with [From Up on] Poppy’s Hill that was really, really powerful. I’m very curious about that because obviously it’s the everyday moments in things like [My Neighbor] Totoro that validate it. When Mei is running barefoot and she’s scraping the soot from the floor, it gives a rooting to the tale of a giant forest god living in a tree, in a camphor tree. These are the things that I feel make animation beautiful. That was the license that we gave our team. We said, “Look, this series is going to be made by creatives, for creatives. We’re not going to revise on marketing notes, we’re not going to do marketing research. We’re going to animate linearly and you can trust that your animation and your work is going to be sanctified and protected,” and we did that. The series feels alive because everybody from the PA to the animators in every studio that we work in felt protected.

 

We recently finished what I think is one of the most perfect runs in animation in many, many years, which was Gravity Falls. I always talk to the team of Trollhunters and say, we have to aspire to Gravity Falls. We have to aspire to deliver real emotion, beautiful action, and heartfelt moments that are true, you know? That show felt so great. Obviously I love Over the Garden Wall, and I watch international animation a lot, so there’s a lot of things in other countries that are interesting. French shorts from a school like Gobelins [L'École de L'Image], or Brazilian animation … there’s a lot that is in animation, it’s a medium that is so accessible to young storytellers that is fascinating. Did you see Boy and the World, which was distributed by GKIDS? It’s absolutely amazing. And then you have The Red Turtle from Italy.

The excellent DreamWorks Animation series Trollhunters is available to stream on Netflix now!

trollhunters-poster