Teenage Euthanasia Creators Talk Returning for Season 2, Expanding Their Dystopia and More
Teenage Euthanasia creators Alissa Nutting and Alyson Levy opened up to ComicBook.com about returning to Adult Swim for Season 2, fleshing out the Florida dystopia further, and more in an exclusive interview.
Returning for Teenage Euthanasia Season 2
NICK VALDEZ, COMICBOOK.COM: I was so happy to hear that Teenage Euthanasia's coming back for Season 2 because it felt so different than a lot of the Adult Swim stuff that I've seen, and I've been in it and watched these shows for a long time. How did it feel for the both of you getting in there and actually working on this second season?
ALYSON LEVY: It was great. I just felt like we had learned so much the first time. The first one was all during the pandemic, and so now we were able to do animatic edits in person...I think really just helped make the show so much more dynamic. Then we knew the characters so much better, too. We had spent a lot of time creating everything the first season, and now we could just run with it and really take them to all these new places and not worry, "Oh, do people really know that Trophy's Annie's mom?" Hopefully people do. Yeah, it was super fun.
ALISSA NUTTING: It's like [The Sims] or something. We're sort of like season one, there's so much that you're establishing and getting an understanding of. It was really, really nice just knowing the actualized versions of these characters and really being able to dive into their screwed-up psychology. It was so much fun.
Big Goal for Season 2?
Speaking to that, actually, was there a particular goal that the team wanted to achieve with this second season using all of those lessons learned from season one?
NUTTING: I think just make an amazing show, a fantastic show that is just so hilarious and weird and bizarre and entertainingly disturbing. All of those things.
LEVY: We could really learn how much this show could hold. We could really keep it moving. The scripts could be long. We don't dwell on certain things. We just were really aware of just how much we could pack in. To us, it feels like the pacing really, we got much more comfortable with the pacing and to really up it.
It was just fun to have so many more episodes. We spent a lot of the first season really establishing Annie and Trophy's relationship, and now we could really mix it up. You could have Pete and Trophy, and Annie and Baba, and Baba and Trophy...After that primary relationship was established, it really is a show about a whole family, and we were able to really get into it.
Favorite Character to Dive Into With Season 2
Was there a particular member of the Fantasy family that you both were particularly excited to explore further heading into this new season now that everyone was established in season one?
LEVY: Maybe for me, Baba. We didn't fully give her a whole episode last time, and this season we do. We learn more about her backstory, and she gets to be in whole storylines that are really just her, where it's not even just her and Annie. We're always figuring out are they all alone or what combination? Are they together? Any combination of them work. But I feel like to me it was Baba. I wanted to know more about her and give her more airtime.
NUTTING: There's an emotional support goat this season at the funeral home. It had made some very brief appearances, I think, in season one, but it's really a member of the family this season. It really joined the cast as a bereavement goat for the funeral home in a substantial way. You even learn the goat's backstory in an episode. So that's pretty great. We have so many just amazing guest star characters too that are really fun.
I think in this season we see Annie get a little bit more of a backbone. As just a recovering meek teen myself, that's something that's fun to see, the way that Annie can begin to establish some boundaries on her own terms, her own meek terms, has been fun.
Balancing Sadness With Humor
In the first season, we learned that [Annie] literally can't cry, otherwise it ruins everything. I was particularly gripped by that because you've developed this dystopia with the [Franchise Territory of Florida]. But still, Annie's this little bright piece of hope. Is it tough to balance that satire of how doomed this future is? Because this is an animated comedy, is it tough to still keep it wacky, but yet be like, "Okay, well they really are fully controlling bodies here"?
NUTTING: That's the question I wake up and ask myself every morning about life. I think we're all in that boat of just how do I balance just the despair and the doom of so many current events and aspects of society and systems that are very clearly failing so many people with my desire to continue living and find hope and joy and all of that. I think in that way, there's a piece of Annie in all of us.
It was really important, particularly after season one, we did entirely in the pandemic. I think the show got a lot less dystopian, not only because reality has gotten more dystopian, but also just because we do want to serve up the audience a little side dish of hope, I think, with the comedy and the satire.
LEVY: I think that's a true way I do feel. There's some stuff in there that maybe is how I look. There's a storyline this season that to me is very my approach to life, where Baba is like, "Hate can be the thing that drives you." You don't have to feel defeated by hatred, or this can be what is the thing that brings you your greatness. I think there's a way to just tap into, yeah, this is the circumstance we're all dealt, but it doesn't have to be the thing that defeats you.
Ultimately Trophy, our main character, is a character who had committed suicide and gets brought back to life non-voluntarily and takes it on. I feel like in this extremely dark way, that is so hopeful. It's under-thought about maybe, but it is to me this fundamental hope of the thing is that she doesn't die. She gets to have this second chance of life. That's hope fundamentally.
Yeah, because in the Season 2 premiere, it's fun or funny or strange...I don't know the proper term for it, but the Florida schooling system has deemed partying as the way to cope with it all. That seems like the vibe from the other Season 2 episodes I've seen too, as you've mentioned, where it's less outward despair, but it's still very much there, just more systematic in scale.
NUTTING: Yeah, that's my coping mechanism. That one also is one of my favorite thoughts is instead of they're always trying to build...I have daughters and they're in school, and there's all this resilience training and whatever, all these things they're always trying to do to the kids. This is the perfect Teenage Euthanasia storyline that they take that real idea, but then they spend all this money to just encourage partying, and Annie's failing miserably at it. But yeah, I think there is something to just trying to have...that episode's called "Remember Fun" and really try to remember fun, people.
What to Take Away From Teenage Euthanasia Season 2
Just as a final question leading into Season 2's premiere, what is something you hope that people who maybe haven't seen the first season take away from Teenage Euthanasia Season 2?
NUTTING: First and foremost, just I think it's so funny. People like to laugh. People like to have a good time. People like to feel like they're not alone in both individual and systematic hellscapes. I think our show does all of that. So hopefully it can help you feel better.
LEVY: Yeah, we have a little thing in our...we see you, the meek teens, the troubled kids. We do the outcasts and the weirdos. I think we do. Especially women or young girls, I think there isn't quite been something exactly like our show. I really hope they find us. Maybe on TikTok, they get to watch some clip and then decide to come watch our show. But we see you, and we're trying to make you have a good laugh at what's going on. Hopefully we can connect in that way.
Teenage Euthanasia premieres on Adult Swim on July 26th at midnight and streams with Max the next day.
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