Last week saw the season finale of Syfy’s Devil May Care, the animated sitcom featuring Alan Tudyk as the literal devil, ruling over a version of Hell that’s funnier and more pitiful than anything you’ve seen on TV before, rather than being scary and punishing. That all came to a head in the first season finale, in which Hell literally froze over, leaving the characters stranded and powerless, ready to hit the road in search of a new home for eternal damnation at the end of the episode in a cliffhanger that exudes confidence in a second season.
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That’s not without reason: Tudyk’s other Syfy show, Resident Alien, airs on the same night and just got its second season, providing Devil May Care with an ideal partner in scheduling. But there’s nothing official just yet.
Writer/producers Doug Goldstein (Robot Chicken) and Amanda Miller joined ComicBook to talk about the finale, what they hope to come next, and just how the heck they came up with the wacky world of Devil May Care.
ComicBook: At what point in development, did you guys know that the finale was going to be “Hell Freezes Over?”
Doug Goldstein: We were just joking about that the other day. I think when we started to outline the episodes in the first place, it occurred to one of us that if we made the finale “to be continued,” then the network would just have to give us a second season. So we started off with that idea and then we said, well, what is something huge that we can do that isn’t just a minor thing, but something that would affect the whole world.
ComicBook: Obviously, I don’t think you guys have heard officially yet if you’re coming back, but I assume there’s a level of confidence that comes with building that kind of cliffhanger in, right?
Amanda Miller: Is there any word on the street? We’re fortunate in that we’re also right behind Resident Alien with Alan Tudyk, and he obviously has a really dedicated fanbase, and we’ve enjoyed seeing our ratings go up as the season progresses. So we have all of our fingers crossed.
Doug Goldstein: What we’re seeing now is that we’re very confident.
ComicBook: Alan is obviously the standout name, especially because of the connection to Resident Alien. But this whole cast is really great. Obviously, with Robot Chicken, Doug has been dealing with basically everybody who’s ever done a voice for anything for 30 years. How do you pare that down to a core cast of like a half dozen people?
Doug Goldstein: Well, it really is just the case of starting with our characters and going from there. I don’t think I used or tapped into any existing relationships I had from Robot Chicken, because I actually did ask people like Breacken Meyer if they’d be up for it, and he definitely was, but then as the characters came into focus, he didn’t seem right for the role. In today’s day and age, actors are really open to voice acting and we got very positive responses to anyone we reached out to as far as availability and interest goes. It just came down to the question of who worked out to be the best for the role. And I think we ended up with perfect people.
ComicBook: So — why William McKinley?
Doug Goldstein: I knew that I wanted someone who’d be a number two for Devil, that it would be funny if that guy on earth was in charge of something — and now he’s that he’s working for Devil because he’s not number one anymore. And I’ve always been fascinated by all the presidents we had in the 1800s because you can’t tell them apart; they’re all just a bunch of guys wearing black suits and black hats.
So I went to pick one, and I came across McKinley’s Wikipedia page, and his resting face was so intense that I was like, “ah!” He just jumped out as being the perfect guy. So if you go to Wikipedia, just stare into his eyes and you’ll see what I mean.
ComicBook: Was there any over the course of the season, was there any particular relationship that took shape in a way that you were surprised by how well it worked?
Doug Goldstein: I had very high hopes for the show, so everything came out just as awesome as I thought it would. But I think, what is developing between Beans and Coma is not something that I saw on day one. She just turned out to be…I don’t want to use the word adorable, but she turned out to be intriguing in a way that I think Beans, not knowing what he’s doing with his life, would be attracted to. So there’s sense of something going on there that I hadn’t planned, which is really cool to discover.
ComicBook: Amanda, who’s the character that you kind of enjoyed seeing come to life the most?
Amanda Miller: Probably Regina, I think. We had such an incredible cast, and everybody brought so much to it, but I think one of the interesting things was what Pamela Adlon did with Regina. Doug likes to share this anecdote as well, but when she stepped in the booth, when we recorded the pilot, she was like, “all right, I think Regina is going to be Bulgarian.” They gave her an accent and gave her an attitude that lined up really nicely with the character that is a succubus.
And then we got incredibly lucky with our guest stars, too. Lewis Black as an atheist could not have been better cast. And Jack McBrayer as God. So it was just really fun to work with all these folks, especially in a pandemic where we were able to still work and get great performances, and make this thing come to life from the comfort of our homes.
ComicBook: You guys have a plan already in place for what season two would entail?
Doug Goldstein: Oh, well, we have a list of aspects of this university that we haven’t yet explored that we want to, for instance, devil’s relationship with people on earth, how he gets more people to hell, what’s going on beyond the city in hell. There’s a lot of deserted areas that we call the outer waste that we haven’t actually seen. There’s a few characters that we haven’t given as much screen time as he wanted to like Gloria, what does she do with her day? She’s the head demons, she keeps hell running, but what does she do? What does that mean? So there’s like a laundry list of stories that we want to tell, and hopefully we can explore them. Plus we have a long-term plan for the show of where it’s going to go, that I don’t want to tip my hat on, but we’ve just barely started that journey. So we have a lot of things in the works, I think.
ComicBook: If you were to get a second season, would paying off the cliffhanger drive the whole season or would it get resolved pretty quick?.
Doug Goldstein: I wouldn’t say it’s the whole direction for the next season, but it’s something that is going to show a side of Devil, we haven’t seen yet because he’s not just able to fix something easily. Usually, he has these great out of the box ideas and he gets things done, but here’s something that’s kind of bigger than he is. And what is he going to do about that? And how does that impact his personality? And that might put him on a footing that we can use to start exploring the story that I was talking about that I mean, it’s not a national secret like nuclear codes, but I don’t want to say anything about it.
