Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur Producers Talk Season 2

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur Executive Producers Steve Loter and Rodney Clouden discuss what fans will see in season two and more.

Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur follows Lunella Lafayette as she deals with the struggles of being a young super hero. In this series, 13-year-old supergenius Lunella accidentally brings 10-ton Tyrannosaurus rex Devil Dinosaur into present-day New York City via a time vortex so of course they work together to protect the city’s Lower East Side from danger.

Season two of Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur premieres February 2 on Disney Channel and Disney XD, and next day on Disney+.

We sat down with executive producers Steve Loter and Rodney Clouden to talk about the recent Annie Awards nominations for the series, what season 2 has in store for fans, and the importance of creating a show that allows everyone to be seen.

Executive Producers Steve Loter and Rodney Clouden Talk Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur

Tessa Smith: Congratulations on the Annie Awards nomination! How does the incredible reaction this show has gotten feel?

Steve Loter: It’s been fantastic. I mean, just getting recognized by your peers is fantastic. But the love that we’re getting from the audience is incredible. The fan art and the comments and everything has just been so overwhelmingly positive, we’re absolutely thrilled to bring Lunella to the screen. 

Rodney Clouden: It just reaffirms that you’ve made the right decisions on things. But especially from your peers, because we are the hardest critics on each other sometimes. So to be recognized, and people appreciating what we’re doing, is really cool.

Tessa Smith: My daughter was so excited to meet her at Disneyland. What does it feel like having a character you worked on literally come to life?

Steve Loter: It’s surreal. It’s a little surreal. When you see the character you go, Oh, we designed it that way. Oh, interesting how it looks in real life. But there she is walking right in front of you. It’s fantastic. Disneyland having that little corner there was just absolutely amazing. I spent some time there. I went there once and I spent an afternoon just watching Moon Girl interact with families and children. It’s incredible. Everyone just lights up when they see her.

Rodney Clouden: I was geeked when I heard. I was like, first of all, I didn’t believe it. Are you serious? Is this really happening? And then you start to see the designs, and you’re making notes on designs and everything. Then, when we finally saw her, you’re like, wow, they actually did it. And then to see the excitement of people. We went to Disneyland several times and I would talk to people that were in charge of the area and they were saying people just love Moon Girl. And the music. Because it’s playing over and over. The whole soundtrack is playing over and over again, but nobody’s rolling their eyes or going home.

Tessa Smith: With Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur season 2 getting picked up so early on, did you have a plan while still working on season 1?

Steve Loter: We knew immediately. It felt like season one was Lunella becoming a superhero, but season two was her being the superhero and things change. Villains start to level up against her. The stresses of family life versus superheroing life is coming into play. Friendships get strained. We wanted to show that it’s not all fun and games. She goes through some stressful situations this season, among all the music and comedy as well. But yeah, it’s a challenging season for Lunella Lafayette.

Rodney Clouden: Yeah, it’s something that where you have to imagine that someone, who is a 13 year old girl, who is living a double life, living that duality of being a superhero and holding the secret from your family, that you’re putting yourself in danger. And the idea of would they want me to continue to do this? Are they going to stop me? Or are they not gonna want to be around me? So what are the repercussions of that? How will that affect her relationship with family? A lot of this season we’re dealing with relationships and family, and even with friendships. Dealing with things that, I think, are relatable. We feel like Spider-Man has that relatability and that’s what makes him so popular. And I think that’s what we’re going through with Lunella also.

Tessa Smith: One of my favorite things in this show is the comedy. Does the cast get to improvise at all?

Rodney Clouden: We get improvisation but also you stick to the page. It’s like, Okay, now try something. And sometimes some things happen by accident, and we’re like, oh, that’s it. Do that again. Or we love that take, or we’re taking pieces of one take and putting it into another one because they did something really interesting on one take. Then we kind of build on that. It’s kind of all over the place in terms of that, but we’ll get what we want. But then we also get something that is completely different, and sometimes we get an idea. There’s room for flexibility.

Tessa Smith: Have you found that the cast is more comfortable in their characters now and willing to bring ideas to the table?

Steve Loter: Oh, yeah. All of our cast pretty much locked into the characters very early. But we’re at a point now where they can come to us and gauge this is how my character would react in any given situation, because they know them so well. I think Laurence Fishburne in particular as the Beyonder. He has the most flexibility. He knows the intention of the scene. He knows what is supposed to happen. He knows the direction but he does such incredible improv on mic that you get something that’s gold. And that’s what you end up using.

Rodney Clouden: Yeah, in terms of the characteristics, people are pretty dialed in. The actors are dialed in so you give them a little instruction, and then they do a little nuance change. It also makes the sessions shorter.

Tessa Smith: Was there something this season that you were particularly excited to see come to the screen.

Steve Loter: We had a direction that we wanted to go in season two, and keying on the life of the superhero and the stressful nature of that. And so we wrote episode one and came up with a story for episode fourteen at the same time, because they are bookends. A conclusion to the same story. And both of those stories are really important to the show and who is Moon Girl. So there was definite intention for the type of stories we wanted to tell this year, because she’s definitely leveled up. We gave her a new costume, she has new tech. But a lot of that, it doesn’t come in to play when you encounter a villain that is really formidable in ways that you have never dealt with before.

Rodney Clouden: Yeah, and just with Beyonder, we’re going to explore their relationship more. How they are with each other, and then what it means, and especially the thing that they go through, they go through something very traumatic in that first episode. We have that exploring with them, exploring with the family, exploring with a friendship with Casey and Devil Dinosaur. So there’s a lot of things that we’re going to be exploring relationship wise.

Steve Loter: There’s still plenty of music and comedy.

Tessa Smith:  Can you talk about the amazing music in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur season 2?

Steve Loter: As you can tell in season one, music was always a strong part of the show, but for season two, we really stretched the genre. We just jumped around from different style to style and it was great. Rafael Sadiq, our executive music producer, is a pure genius through and through. For instance, with episode two, Suit Up, the mixtape song, has kind of a western feel to it. I remember sitting down with him and saying, Hey, can you give us something a little Sergio Leone, but not quite that, but something in that zone. And he’s like, Alright, I think I know what you’re talking about. And he gave us this this incredible song, Suit Up.

Tessa: Well thank you so much for creating something that I can enjoy with my daughters. It is one of our favorite things to watch together.

Rodney Clouden: That’s the whole objective here. Lunella is a character that is aspirational and you look at and see girls, Black girls in STEM, you see girls in STEM and in science and technology. And that’s something that you really don’t see that much in the media. So to have a character like Lunella that makes it accessible and relatable, that you can watch with your family, that it’s a great thing. That’s a huge compliment for us. 

Season two of Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur premieres February 2 on Disney Channel and Disney XD, and next day on Disney+.