Craig McCracken’s “Kid Cosmic” is one of the best animated shows of the past few years, bursting with heart and imagination. And while it debuted on Netflix almost exactly a year ago, it has already cycled through three seasons and 24 half-hour episodes. And while it is sad to see the show go, it ends in a way that is both emotionally satisfying and extremely entertaining (we are forbidden from discussing details).
With the third and final season now streaming on Netflix, TheWrap spoke with series creator Craig McCracken about where the show came from and ending “Kid Cosmic” and concluding the series its own terms.
Secret Origins
The idea for “Kid Cosmic” struck McCracken back in 2009. “It really was just this odd kid that lived in this desert community and drove people, local truckers and staff, in this truck stop crazy. And he had found this object that he assumed was from space, and decided he was destined to be the savior of the universe,” McCracken said. Eventually, the series would introduce us to the rambunctious orphan Kid Cosmic (Jack Fisher), his hippie grandfather Papa G (Keith Ferguson), teenager Jo (Amanda C. Miller), a marooned alien they call Stuck Chuck (Tom Kenny), and a talking, psychic cat named Tunafish (Fred Tatasciore). Together, they discover some “cosmic stones of power,” that give them each a special power, and get into a series of adventures that could comfortably be described as what would happen if “Avengers: Infinity War” was animated in the style of old “Dennis the Menace” comic strips.
But as the idea for “Kid Cosmic” evolved, so did the format. Soon it was clear: “Kid Cosmic” couldn’t be a series of interchangeable, 11-minute episodes, like most super-popular animated series are (exhibit A: the unending juggernaut known as “SpongeBob SquarePants”). Instead, McCracken was interested in sequential, half-hour-episodes. “I’ve got to tell a big story,” McCracken said. “I had to wait until the networks and the streamers were interested in telling serialized stories in kids’ animation.”
Enter: Netflix. The streaming giant has a reputation, especially amongst animators, for giving the go-ahead for potentially problematic or cumbersome projects that couldn’t be made anywhere else. “I was fortunate to have an animatic for the first episode. I showed it to Netflix and their response was, ‘We love this. We think it’s great. We want to make it. How does three seasons of 10 episodes each, and serialized 22-minute storytelling sound?’ And I’m like, ‘That’s exactly what I want. It’s perfect.’” McCracken said that Netflix was interested in making a serialized show and that “Kid Cosmic” “had the potential to do that.” And they wanted to cap the number of episodes, something that appealed to McCracken. “I didn’t want to do a show that could kind of last forever and make six, seven seasons of it,” McCracken said. “I wanted to do something kind of short and sweet.” Short and sweet, just like Kid Cosmic himself.
While three seasons of 10 episodes were ordered by Netflix, that too changed. “As we were breaking the story, at certain point, myself and my writers and directors went to Netflix and said, ‘We don’t need 30. Could we do less?’ We would come up with the story for the season, and then we would break it up into what we felt were good, solid episodes that had good cliffhanger. And we reached a point where, even with season 2, we’re like, ‘We don’t need 10 in Season 2. It would feel better as eight. And Season 3 felt better as six.’ The last thing we wanted to do was make some filler episodes, which didn’t really move the story forward, and it would just tap the resources of our crew, having to make these episodes that aren’t essential.” Instead, the team “put all our resources to making the essential episodes to really tell that story, and make it work as one long form.” More importantly, McCracken was able to dictate how the story was told over a number of episodes he decided.
Unfinished Business
Part of the reason that McCracken was so insistent on a specific amount of episodes is due to his experience on his last original series, Disney’s “Wander Over Yonder.” That series was a brilliant little show (that ingeniously used the 11-minute format to their advantage) that followed space traveler Wander (Jack McBrayer) and his trusty steed Sylvia (April Winchell) as they bop around the cosmos, getting into adventures. Its singular art style, a sort of cuddly 70s psychedelia that wouldn’t be out of place airbrushed on the side of a van, was endlessly charming, as was the swift, super-efficient storytelling. “Wander Over Yonder” debuted alongside a slate of playfully experimental Disney Channel animated series that also included “Gravity Falls” and “Pickle & Peanut.” It was the kind of show which, properly supported, could have aired for years and years. As it turns out, that was a big “if.”
“What happened is we did two seasons of ‘Wander Over Yonder’ at Disney Television Animation. And we really felt like we were going to get a chance for a third season. We put together a loose structure of what it would be,” McCracken said. “And we pitched it to the studio head. And we had just won the Emmy for Outstanding Series. So, we were like, ‘Well, we think this is going to happen.’ And then they just canceled the show. So, all those plans we had for it just never manifested into a show.”
When Netflix gave the 30-episode count, McCracken felt relief – and determination. “We made sure to tell the story we wanted to tell in that time. We never thought about any potential future pickups. And it was just like, ‘Okay, this is what we have to do. Let’s make sure we just tell the whole story with these finite number of episodes.’”
McCracken said that he’s still “frustrated” that “Wander Over Yonder” was “left hanging,” and it’s clear that he is very happy with what they accomplished with the epic saga of “Kid Cosmic.” “We take a lot of pride in the fact that ‘Kid Cosmic’ is done. We told that story, it’s always there, it’s 24 episodes. It tells one big story. It feels tied up and great.” Yes it does.
A Constant State of Evolution
One of the most surprising and satisfying things about “Kid Cosmic,” across its arc, is that the show changes from one season to the next. Not only does a different character take center stage in each season, but the show gently morphs, first from a kind of coming-of-age genre story to an intergalactic epic to, with the third season, something more akin to Saturday morning cartoons, with Kid and the gang serving a global spy organization to keep the world safe from others who have harnessed the stones. As it turns out, the mutating nature of the show was baked in from the beginning, meant to emphasize the series’ thematic concerns.
“What we basically did is the theme for each season was, What does it mean to be a hero? So, Season 1 was heroes help. And Season 2 was heroes care. And Season 3 was heroes sacrifice,” McCracken said. “They were these three things. The Kid sort of had to learn about what a real hero was. And it wasn’t about winning the trophies, and getting the cool cars and the great outfits, and being popular and famous. Even though that’s why a lot of kids are drawn towards heroes, is that power fantasy right? We wanted Kid to learn that’s really not what it’s all about. That’s superficial and shallow. We wanted them to learn more of a real human lesson about this is what being a hero is all about. So, we had those basic themes that we approached each season with from the very beginning.”
Each season, the team asked themselves, “How do we make each season different?” They soon landed on the first season being set on earth, the second season being set in space, and the third season being set someplace that we can’t really talk about (just yet). “That was early on in developing the show. We had those basic ideas to make each season different, but kind of connect to each other,” McCracken said. “We weren’t really repeating ourselves each season.”
And while McCracken built “Kid Cosmic” to be a specific amount of episodes, he hasn’t completely ruled out a return, noting that Netflix and the viewers would ultimately make the decision as to whether or not they’d come back. “We always said, ‘Well, let’s tell this story and end it, and then not leave it open for more. And if there ever anyone wants more, then we would just come up with something new,’” McCracken said.
While McCracken hasn’t nailed down his next project just yet (he said he’s still at Netflix “doing some pie-in-the-sky development”), you can bet that whatever it is, it has a definitive ending. And hopefully it’s just as spectacular as what he pulled off with “Kid Cosmic.”
All three seasons of “Kid Cosmic” are available on Netflix now.