Genndy Tartakovsky Talks Creating Unicorn: Warriors Eternal, Returning to Primal, and More

Genndy Tartakovsky has developed a number of memorable action cartoons for Cartoon Network and Adult Swim over the decades with hits such as Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Primal and more. That’s why all eyes have been on Unicorn: Warriors Eternal ever since it was announced. Tartakovsky’s coming off of Primal Season 2, one of the best received action shows of the last few years, and is breaking out with a story that he has been developing for the last two decades. Unicorn: Warriors Eternal has quite a lot to showcase, and thankfully ComicBook.com had to chance to look into it a bit. 

Unicorn: Warriors Eternal will premiere its first two episodes on Adult Swim on Thursday, May 4th at midnight before streaming with HBO Max the next day. New episodes will then debut weekly with encore broadcasts at 7:00PM on Fridays and with Adult Swim’s Toonami programming block on Saturdays. With such a premiere planned, ComicBook.com got the chance to speak with Unicorn: Warriors Eternal creator Genndy Tartakovsky all about what went into planning a series for over two decades, its many changes, and even whether or not he’d consider returning to older works. 

Read on for our full chat (which has been edited for clarity) with Unicorn: Warriors Eternal creator Genndy Tartakovsky, and let us know what you’re hoping to see from the new series in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animation and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!

Reacting to Unicorn: Warriors Eternal’s Progress

NICK VALDEZ, COMICBOOK.COM: You had mentioned in the promotional materials for Unicorn: Warriors Eternal that it was a project you first conceived of 20 years ago, and has been essentially in development all this time. How does it feel to finally see it come to fruition? Has it sunk in?

GENNDY TARTAKOVSKY: I think it’ll sink in once people watch it. I think it’s great that from some of the interviews people have watched the episodes, and so far I feel like it’s been a really positive reaction. It’s a unique situation that I’m in because we just had second season of Primal premiere last year, so I’m still coming off of that. We didn’t know when Unicorn was going to come out because we had the episodes done at the end of last year. 

Now that it’s finally coming out, it’s super exciting and now getting back into it and seeing people react to it positively because it’s so different obviously than Primal. As long of a journey that it’s been to get the show done is incredible. Yeah. I think it’ll fully sink in when the first episode airs.

Bringing It All Together

Speaking to all those differences from Primal as a good example, one of the coolest aspects I noticed from Unicorn was that so many varied elements blend together into a cohesive world and story. You’ve got that fantastical magic stuff, you have reincarnation, and time travel, and steampunk. I just want to know, what were the challenges of making sure that all of that becomes an easy to follow narrative?

TARTAKOVSKY: It was really hard. It was very challenging to find the tone for the show, because like you said, it’s got comedy, it’s got drama, it’s got high emotion, it’s got action with these cartoony characters, steampunk world, so we wanted to build its own world and tone, and that’s really hard to do. I never used to think about it in the old days. I was just like, “Oh, let’s just be funny and artistic and that’s it.” Nowadays, definitely tone and mood is my number one goal, and then of course, character development and then story. We wanted to tell the character stories and focus on the characters, especially obviously Melinda and Edred and their duality. We had to write all the 10 episodes first just to really figure it out where we’re going and how we’re going to do it.

Starting this show in the early 2000s and then finally getting to do it 20 years later, there’s been so much done. It’s hard enough to do any kind of Fantasy or Sci-Fi without being cliche, without being redundant that somebody else did it. We found ourselves really changing a lot of it because in the original planning of stuff that I wanted to do, somebody else already did it in the 20 years. That’s the frustrating part about it. I’m like, “Okay, well this is already cliche, this is already cliche. God damn it. What are we left with?” Then you start to figure it out and then it’s all good because then something new and different and sometimes better comes out.

What’s Changed for Unicorn Over 20 Years?

Speaking of the long development period and how much has changed from your original vision of it, how close is this final evolution of Unicorn to when you first conceived it? Was it changed because of your specific work with series like Primal, Samurai Jack and like, or was it more of those outside influences that you mentioned? 

TARTAKOVSKY: It’s very similar. One change was it used to really focus on the technology versus magic. That was more I think on the surface, and then through the years that took a backseat. You’ve got I, Robot, you’ve got all these movies where the robots take over, and that was the biggest element that was like, “Oh my God, this feels so done now.” The Terminator, all that stuff, the robots rising. We got rid of pretty much almost all of that in a really, I think, creative and fun way. The character stuff came to the top. That’s what it was. 

Learning through [Samurai] Jack, through Primal especially, it’s about the character relationships. We all know when we’re making a story that’s important, but sometimes we don’t focus on it. We are so hypnotized or mesmerized on the art and the fancy animation and all this stuff that you forget if you don’t get the emotions and character personalities, everything else is pointless. It could look as good as you want it to look, but if the characters are dumb, then nobody’s going to like it. Our full focus was on the character stories.

Challenges in Keeping Things Fresh

With that in mind as Unicorn: Warriors Eternal tells its own elaborate story, is it challenging in having to keep coming up with something new?

TARTAKOVSKY: It is. The first test of a good idea for me is if I can jot down 10 simple ideas, and if I struggle, if I go to camp or dude ranch within the first 10 episodes, I know it’s a bad idea and it doesn’t have legs. Fortunately for Unicorn, I was able to do multiple ideas, multiple season ideas, because the world is so ripe and it’s so brand new that you can do so much. If we get tired of these characters, we can go back to another time period or they’re re-awoken in the future. You know what I mean? You can do so many things, and that was the exciting part of it that I did sell it as this big four season thing. But we’re going to do one season first, and hopefully it’ll work and people will like it, and then we’ll continue on.

One of the things you did touch on previously was establishing tone. This will be a lot of younger audience’s first real series experience with yours. Did you have a particular goal in mind when preparing for this new group? 

TARTAKOVSKY: I don’t think of it that way. You know what I mean? It’s hard to be that self-aware of myself. “Oh God, they’re going to experience a Genndy show. Wow. I’m so excited for them.” [laughs] It’s not like that at all. I’ve always made the shows for me and people in the crew because if we like it, then we hope other people like it because I don’t know what you like, I don’t know what the next person likes, I don’t know what a kid likes, and if we get into a world where, “Oh my God, pirates are really popular right now, we should do a pirate show,” that’s when it fails.

Everything that I’ve ever done comes from the inside because I really want to see it myself. Nobody was crying for a dinosaur and caveman relationship show. It was something that was in me and it just came out, and then luckily people liked it. You know what I mean? Unicorn‘s the same thing. It came from my period back then. It’s evolved through everything that I’ve done to what it is now. I’m excited that people watch it and if it’s their first thing that they’ve watched of mine, I hope it’ll be good and they’ll like it. I’ve never thought of it that way. With every show that comes out, I feel like my career’s just starting. I really do feel that way.

Primal Season 3?

Touching on Primal actually, Season 2 wrapped with a seemingly definitive conclusion for Spear and Fang’s stories, but fans were already asking for Season 3, spin-offs, or even more stories. I wanted to know from your perspective whether you feel like there’s still more to explore in maybe a sequel or a spinoff as fans were asking for? 

TARTAKOVSKY: There is. I have something in mind that is so spectacular I cannot wait to do it, and we’re trying to figure out how to do it. It’s a brand new world, but I’m so into it. I think everybody’s going to love it. It’s a very natural progression without giving anything away, but I’ve got more things for the Primal world and I cannot wait to do more.

Potential Returns for Dexter’s Lab or Sym-Bionic Titan?

On top of Primal, you’ve done a lot of great series over the years. So I do have to ask, with all the reboots and sequels and new seasons we’ve gotten lately, do you have an interest in maybe returning to Dexter’s Laboratory or Sym-Bionic Titan as those are some of the most highly requested by fans?

TARTAKOVSKY: Dexter probably no. Because number one, the voice actress [Christine Cavanaugh] passed away and she was such the soul of Dexter I don’t feel comfortable trying to replace her in a way.  And we’ve done so many of them. I don’t know why there’s more to be done. You know what I mean? It’s kind of a weird thing. Titan, for sure. Yeah, that story’s not finished. We have more things written already and figured out for it to finish, but somebody’s got to want to finish it.

It’s not up to me. It’s not like I can go, okay, Genndy, here’s $10 million or whatever. My life doesn’t work like that. It’s still, well, “Why should we do it? Why was this canceled?…Are people going to watch it?” You still have to resell it and have people want to pay for it. It’s not up to me. Yeah, that’s probably the only thing I would return to. Obviously there’s more Primal planned, and hopefully I’ll get to do it, but looking backwards, I have too much new stuff that I still want to do. Unicorn is just scratching the surface of where I want to go.