Last year, Guillermo Del Toro kicked off a new animated series for Netflix: Trollhunters, about a young boy Jim (voiced by the late Anton Yelchin) fighting off a horde of Trolls living underneath his hometown of Arcadia. Turns out Arcadia has a bit more than a troll problem: Two new forces are on the way, big enough to expand the whole thing into three separate TV series.
Image: Still via YouTube
Announced through Entertainment Weekly today, the second season of Trollhunters will lay the groundwork for two new, separate animated series about live in Arcadia: 3 Below, tackling a sci-fi-bent world of two royal aliens fleeing their planet after a coup to hide among suburban Americana in Arcadia. And Wizards, will be about… well, hazard a wild guess. If you guessed Wizards, congratulations, you’re right! That series will be more interconnected than Trollhunters and 3 Below, uniting the worlds of Trolls, Aliens and Wizards against a mystical threat that threatens all three fantastical communities as well as Arcadia itself.
“In the early season of Trollhunters, we already introduced characters you don’t know how important they are for the [other] two series, that have been in the planning for years,” del Toro told EW. “Wizards tracks down the whole backstory of Trollhunters and much, much more and brings all of this group [of shows] to a conclusion.”
So yes, it means a bigger universe for Trollhunters – although its future beyond season two with the arrival of these two new shows has yet to be confirmed, there are plans to continue forward with a new voice actor replacing the tragically departed Yelchin – but it also means a definitive end for del Toro’s latest animated saga. At least it’s going to go out with a whacking great mishmash of the sort of weird and wonderful things we love del Toro’s work for.
Trollhunters‘ second season debuts on Netflix this December, while 3 Below will release in 2018, followed by Wizard‘s conclusion of the Arcadia Trilogy in 2019.