Jellystone! Creator C. H. Greenblatt Talks Cartoon Network Crossover, Space Ghost and More

Jellystone! has now released the final episodes of its third season with Max, and we got to talk with the creator all about the series to help celebrate! Jellystone! has been one of the most magical releases to come to the Max streaming service in the last few years. First debuting back in 2021, this series reboots characters from across Hanna-Barbera’s massive library of shows and characters and puts them all into a single, wacky world. As the seasons have progressed, so have the cameos and remixes of these classic characters. That’s especially apparent in the third season as it really digs deep into the vault.

Jellystone! Season 3 really goes wild with new takes on The Jetsons, a fun spin on The Flintstones‘ Fred and Barney friendship, Space Ghost popping in for a convention, even more Hanna-Barbera deep cuts, and a massive multiversal crossover with Cartoon Network’s own library of characters in a huge “Crisis” special. To celebrate these episodes now on Max, we got to talk with Jellystone! executive producer and showrunner C. H. Greenblatt all about this huge season.

It’s here Greenblatt spoke about putting together the Cartoon Network crossover, working with Space Ghost Coast to Coast stars George Lowe and Andy Merill, choices behind some of its character choices and many more. Read on below for our interview (which has been edited for length and clarity).

NICK VALDEZ, COMICBOOK: First I have to start out by asking, how do you feel now that this final batch of Jellystone! episodes are finally out in North America?

C. H. GREENBLATT: It’s nice to finally share this work that we were all really excited about. It was a long, long road to get it all done, so it’s really nice that it’s out there where everyone can start to see it. I wish I could sit down and see everybody’s reaction as they watch it. But, it’s just nice to know that people can finally get the chance to hopefully enjoy it.

It all starts out with a bang too, so I have to ask about [“Crisis on Infinite Mirths.”] This big crossover episode brings in a bunch of Cartoon Network classic characters, but how did you and the team decide that Mojo Jojo, Dee Dee, and Billy would be the focal points of the story?

So when we were kind of brainstorming what the story would be, we knew that we had to figure out a way to put an emotional story around it. And at the same time, we only knew we had, like, 21 minutes to tell the story, so we had to kind of focus it down. I think it really came down to us thinking, “Who’s popular that we loved that we would like to see more of?” It definitely helped that [The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy creator] Maxwell Atoms was working on the show. He could really help us make the Billy and Mandy segments authentic.

I think coming down to Mojo Jojo, it was really once we keyed into that love story, I think we all were like, “That is so much fun. That is the heart of the episode.” But it really came out of this idea we kept thinking of “What if Jellystone is kind of this garbage place where where people are sending the worst characters from all of their universes to Jellystone?” and that made us laugh really hard. We thought that’d be really funny that we focus on the characters that I wouldn’t say are maligned, because people do love those characters, but focus on the characters that aren’t necessarily the heroes of each of those shows.

Not even the villains, but just characters that are more annoying. That people see as a little more off putting sometimes. It’s like, “That’d be funny if when they show up in Jellystone, they all kind of fit in.” And that became the core idea of what this episode is gonna be about. I think that’s what really drove us to say, “Oh, if we took Dee Dee and we took Billy and we took Mojo, they would fit into this world and kind of thrive there.” That would really be an interesting story to build on.

Yeah, I love the idea that there’s just a hole they had in their world they just never bothered plugging up.

That’s the thing. Again, with 22 minutes, it’s like we had to just be, “What’s the quickest way that we can have to do a ton of exposition just to get them in here and we can start having fun?”

Jellystone! is already full of reboots in its own multiverse too, and I’ve always been curious about your approach to rebooting the characters. Was there ever any kind of pushback or notes from the studio on certain kinds of characterizations? Especially when you get to the big ones in Season Three, like The Jetsons and that Captain Caveman and Barney Rubble reveal?

No, in fact, they embraced it. There was no pushback. That Barney Rubble reveal’s one of my absolute favorite episodes. That came about in the silliest way. My composer at one point was just like, “Hey, what if Captain Caveman was Barney Rubble?” And I went, “That’s hilarious.” I ran into the writer’s room, and I was like, “We’re doing this story. We gotta figure it out.” Then we threw it to our executive, and he went “I love it. We’re gonna do it.”

So it really was a thing where everybody saw how funny it would be. And I think also because it kind of resets and doesn’t change anything about The Flintstones. The Flintstones can still be its own thing, and we can kind of just be like “That’s our dumb, little, weird version of it.” That it didn’t step on anyone’s toes, and everybody got a good laugh out of it.

Fred happened to be a jerk. It makes a lot of sense.

Right? It was kind of a little bit of a toxic relationship when you look at it through modern eyes.

Another one of the characterizations that I’ve always wanted to ask about was Peter Potamus. His being an anime fan, and a fan of Japan in general, made sense to me because he was always a world traveler anyway. What was the inspiration behind making him a full weeb?

I would say that grew kind of organically. The very first kernel of him on the show was, “Okay, he’s like the UPS guy. He shows up in his balloon and he delivers packages.” Then as we started to use him, at one point, the anime pillow came up. I think from there, we’re like, “Oh, we get it. We know who he is.” This crew is very…we’re all weebs. We get it. So I think with Peter, it just happened organically that once that little crack appeared, everyone just kind of went for it and put themselves into it.

I love it especially because through him we see that Hong Kong Phooey is officially an anime in this universe.

It’s tricky because you’re like, “How do we do this while threading that needle of cultural sensitivity?” And we’re like “Oh, but if it’s anime, we can make it work where it’s its own version.” So yeah, I was really happy to bring that into the universe and not have it feel, inappropriate in any way.

Peter is also at the center of one of the biggest episodes in Season Three, “Space Con,” because it involves [Space Ghost Coast to Coast stars] George Lowe and Andy Merill. How was it working with them on this episode and bringing it all together, especially with the Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Cartoon Planet references?

I almost just say it was emotional. It really meant a lot to a lot of us. Just when we were recording George and Andy, I don’t think any of us didn’t have a giant smile on our face. We were so excited because myself, the directors, the board artists, all of us were huge fans. So when we were able to get them on the show and add that level of authenticity to it…then hearing them and having them it, it was really easy to write for those characters because they’re already such great characters.

That just having them back and alive in the show and existing in that world, it just felt so good. We were just so happy to be doing it. And George was so sweet, and I’m really sad that he’s gone. But he was so sweet, and he was really, very funny. Like, everything you hear about him is true. He’s just really funny, really outgoing, very sweet man.

I love that he also gets in on the spaghetti running gag too. Who really loves spaghetti on the Jellystone! team?

You know what? I think it started with our head writer who wrote it into an outline as this idea of “Welcome Spaghetti,” and it kept coming up. It kept trying to shoehorn in, and I think the rest of the crew kind of just liked it and ran with it. Sometimes someone just says something weird and everybody kind of giggles and starts throwing it in, and it just becomes a thing. There’s really no meaning to it other than someone threw it out one time, and it kind of just stuck.

I love it seeing it every time. I also love seeing so many Hanna-Barbera deep cuts too. Characters that I don’t even think anyone else would have remembered other than your team. Was there one in particular that you were just happy to get on screen?

Devlin. I went into this series wanting, well, there’s two things I really wanted. I wanted the The Jetsons, and I wanted Devlin from the beginning. And we got to do the Jetsons, and I was like, “Okay, we’re gonna do Devlin.” I really wanted to take that old Evil Knievl character and say, “What’s the modern version?” I pictured him as this YouTube star, kind of this Jackass-style YouTube star who is just always getting hurt. That feels like a modern Devlin to me that people could really understand. And it was like, “Oh, he could really be a funny relevant character, and we could put him in the series.” And he was great. So yeah, I was really, really happy to get him in there.

With The Jetsons‘ time travel story too, that was another full double length episode. Was it that the idea just kept getting bigger and needed more of a run time to explore?

I think we knew from the beginning the Jetsons were special just as characters, and they needed a big special story. So I think we approached it as “This is going to be a big story.” In fact, the story was actually much bigger, and we had to shrink it down to fit, because there were more adventures with Doggie Daddy, and we kind of shortened his story way down. I think there were other things going on. Fitting it into 21 minutes is always a little bit of a challenge, but I’m really happy with how it turned out.

Speaking of Augie Doggie and her Doggie Daddie, I had a VHS tape of that cartoon in particular that I just watched all the time. So seeing them get such a prominent role in Jellystone! has always been a big deal to me. When did you decide to have them be such a key component in the show?

From the very beginning. One of the things we first developed for the show was I kind of picked about seven core characters that we would base the majority of the stories around. I knew it was going to be Augie Doggie, Doggie Daddy, Yogi, Cindy, Boo Boo, El Kabong, Jabberjaw, Huckleberry Hound, and Top Cat. Then with Augie, sometimes it’d be her and the kids, and sometimes it’d be her and Daddy. We had to sort of focus it down. Otherwise, we would just have too many characters all the time. But if wrote the stories around them, and one of the characters that everybody really glommed onto, was when I pitched Augie as a little girl with her daddy.

So many people were like, “I get that relationship. I understand that relationship.” The writers and board artists got it. The executives got it. So I think it was one of the cleanest relationship stories that everybody clicked into the quickest. Making this helicopter parent version of Doggie Daddy. And so everybody was like, “We get it. We love it. That’s that’s really easy for us to kind of run with.” So yeah, that was from the very beginning.

As a final question, would you ever consider returning for Chowder with a new revival, special, or something someday?

I would definitely be up for it. There’s been some pitches at Warner for it. I think it really comes down to timing and budgets, but I would be open. I wouldn’t say no. I think if I did, it would have to be a version that evolved it or tweaked it just a little bit so it wasn’t just more of the same thing because with the kids having grown up, the voices are different. So it’d have to kind of be, like, not necessarily a reboot, but some twist on it that, to me, justifies it existing as a new version.

Would you age up Chowder in that specific situation?

I like him as a kid. I think there’s a certain innocence to that, and I think there’s something fun about that idea of learning about the world. And he’s very innocent. He’s very open. I feel like I’d still like them as kids. But I’m glad we got to at least sneak him into the crossover episode.

I love that you got Truffles in there a little bit too!

That comes about because Tara does the voice of [The Powerpuff Girls‘] Bubbles. When you have one of the actors in for one voice, you’re allowed to use them for a couple other voices. So we’re like, ‘Okay, anybody we get in, we gotta do any other characters they did. We’re gonna use them for multiple characters.”

Is that how the Squirrel Boy gag came about?

Exactly. Because otherwise, we wouldn’t have voiced Squirrel Boy, but you already have Richard [Horvitz] there doing Billy. And it’s like, “Well, he’s Squirrel Boy, so we’re gonna have him do Squirrel Boy.”

I really love these final batch of episodes. I unfortunately keep emphasizing “final” because well…

Final for now, but who knows? We all have our fingers crossed. Who knows? If there’s more, we’re ready. Trust me. We’re ready to hit the ground running.

You can now stream all three seasons of Jellystone! on Max.