There is something very special aboutMythic Quest, and it’s partly rooted in something very ordinary: The way we pre-judge things. The Apple TV+ comedy, which debuts its Season 2 finale on Friday, June 25, is exceptionally easy to describe — a workplace comedy set in the video game industry, created by some of the folks behind the long-running raucous FX seriesIt’s Always Sunny in Philadelphiaand co-produced by well-known gaming company Ubisoft.
It’s an easy-to-sell description, one which makes it clear what kind of audience should expect to enjoy this show. AndMythic Questdoes in many ways check those boxes. There’s an eclectic ensemble cast representing the employees working for the titular game studio, inside references to the gaming industry, the occasional crass joke. But it’s also so much more than those things, with some of the most universally affecting and socially relevant storytelling currently happening anywhere, in any medium.
Aiming for a deeper level of narrative, co-creator/starRob McElhenneytold Collider during a recent press junket, was “certainly our intention from the very beginning. We recognized that there was going to be a certain perspective on what we were doing just on its face, and we wanted to subvert some of those expectations. I’d never seen a show or a movie that took place in the world of gaming that treated it with respect and reverence, but then also recognized that it’s problematic and complicated, just like every industry on the planet. And so we wanted to ensure we were making a show first and foremost about human beings who work together.”
Thus, while co-creative directors Ian (McElhenney) and Poppy (Charlotte Nicdao) attempt to marshall the troops to create and improve the newest expansions on their popular MMORPG, there are deeper conversations happening artistic expression and how that gets balanced with interpersonal relationships.
Nicdao said that her perspective on the show changed as they first started shooting, as she had figured initially she would need to do a “bunch of research” on gaming, as she wasn’t a big gamer. She wasn’t complaining, to be clear — “it was like the most fun research that I’ve ever done, researching gaming” — but then she realized that “it is a workplace comedy. It’s not the kind of show that if you don’t know much about games, you won’t get. Because I didn’t know much about games when I came in and I found every single script really funny and really relatable.”
One key aspect of the show is that while it’s specifically about a video game company, many storylines touch upon issues that extend beyond that industry and affect workplace culture as a whole — specifically, what should a properly functioning workplace look like. “It’s been something that’s really important to us andMegan[Ganz, co-creator and executive producer]. We’ve made a concerted effort to address that both onscreen and off. So we spent a lot of time talking about navigating the actual production, the pre-production, the writing, the writers room, then the actual production and then post-production. So we are running a company about a company and we’re addressing those issues in real life and in real time, and then projecting them into the show,” McElhenney said. “Except the difference is that we’re trying to do it the right way, offscreen, and onscreen every once in a while we needed to navigate into the wrong way, because that’s where the conflict arises. In very specific circumstances, that’s where the comedy can come. And also the drama.”
Executive producerDavid Hornsbynoted that “we have an opportunity with streaming to do different things. We can have a breakaway episode with none of our characters in it. This season, we explore the backstory for CW and get to learn about how he became the person he became, how he got into video games, etc. We have the opportunity to really take different swings at the ball. You don’t always get to do that, and now that we have that opportunity to really expand the field, it’s fun to just keep opening up that world and not just relying on just these character dynamics, but really deepening them.”
There, Hornsby’s alluding to the landmark Season 1 episode “A Dark Quiet Death,” which multiple people I spoke with (both members of theMythic Questteam as well as, frankly, pretty much everyone who’s ever watched the show) have cited as a major turning point for the series. A flashback installment focusing on the complicated romance between Doc (Jake Johnson) and Bean (Cristin Milioti), two 90s-era game developers whose connection to the show’s core characters is nebulous for most of the episode, “A Dark Quiet Death” is an emotional gutpunch which proved the show’s capacity for dramatic storytelling alongside the comedy.
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Another breakout episode (one of the few toreally succeed at capturing what it was likeduring the dark days of the coronavirus pandemic) was last year’s “Quarantine” special, which Ganz said came out of the fact that “we couldn’t not talk about those things, because it seemed like putting out a jokey comedy during the middle of a time when people were really struggling, just didn’t feel right to us. Thankfully we have an actor in Charlotte Nicdao, who has an impressive range and was able to balance the comedy that she was doing and also these really emotional turns, and I really connected to the character there. That’s basically what we’re always looking for, is ‘Can we connect to these characters? Do they feel real to us?’ I think that that improves the comedy on the other end because you feel like you know them better and they’re your friends and you want to laugh with your friends. It was a real organic process and something that I hope that we continue through the length of the series.”
Nicdao says, “It does kind of go beyond the formula of day-to-day workplace comedy. It does reach these really incredible heights. And I feel like the thing that’s fun about it is you get the comfort that you get from these comedies that are about, just people getting along or not getting along. And then every so often we’ll hit you with an episode that you’re like, wait, what was that? What just happened? Which makes it, I think a really exciting show to watch.”
Imani Hakim, who plays game tester Dana, said that after she came to set to watch the filming of “A Dark Quiet Death,” she realized that “it is a comedy, it’s a workplace comedy, but we kind of bend genres a little bit. It’s not just comedy, it has so much heart in it, and we really explore that part of our show a lot deeper in Season 2. What I love about the show that you really can’t put it in a box.”
It was a vibe thatJessie Ennis, who plays megalomaniacal assistant Jo, said she did feel from the pilot. “I actually did feel it from the pilot. I just felt like the characters were so unique. Consistently throughout the making of the first season and the second season, I kept saying, it reminds me of nothing. I feel like with most shows you’re able to be like, ‘Okay, so it’s kind of like this show and this show mixed together.’ When I watch episodes of our show I feel like it’s so fresh and new and that’s something I really revel in and find thrilling and inspiring.”
Actually, even before the pilot, Ennis had a sense of how different this show was. “I auditioned for all of the female characters, and [in the audition process] I remember feeling like it was so special that none of them are caricatures,” she said. “Usually when you’re prepping an audition, it’s like, ‘Okay, this is what they want. This is the tone of the show. That’s that kind of character. I know what people expect from that.’ And with this job, I was like, ‘Whoa, these are such fresh, new types of people that we don’t usually get to see.’ So right off the bat, I knew that this was going to be something special.”
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For Ganz, the casting process was when it became clear to her thatMythic Questwould be able to push deeper into its subject matter. “It’s sort of like assembling a toolbox — when you realize that instead of having seven hammers, you have a variety of tools at your disposal, you start thinking, ‘Maybe we can build a better house out of these things.'”
This extended beyond the casting ofF. Murray Abraham(the Oscar-winning legend who, in Ganz’s words, “is clearly no stranger to drama”). “I have known [Danny Pudi], from working with him onCommunity, that he has the ability as an actor to go from straight comedy to more emotional places. It just turns out that we were lucky enough to get a whole cast of people that were able to do that,” she said.
Meanwhile, Pudi (who plays Brad, the company’s head of monetization) credited the show’s writing as a key factor. “I think it’s just so wonderful and rich. I remember early on in Season 1 — this might’ve been the first episode or second episode when we were filming — there was a monologue that Rob was doing that was all about the love of gaming. And I don’t know if we ever ended up using that…”
Ganz confirmed that “We didn’t. Well, we did, but it’s just a clip at the beginning [of the episode] that we breezed through very quickly. But we had a whole day of shooting.”
“We spent a day [on it] and I remember watching Rob perform this monologue which I thought was incredible, but tonally, it was not very… I guess what you would say is typical office comedy,” Pudi continued. “There was a genuine love and appreciation of gaming and these people, and you could just feel that. And so I knew right away, I was like, ‘Oh, this is cool. We’re allowed to go to some of these places that maybe you wouldn’t see.’ Tonally it felt different.”
In addition, the writers have never lost sight of what differentiates the characters of this workplace from, say, the folks onThe Office. “We wanted the show to feel very authentic to people’s experience, and I think as somebody that works in a creative field and does a ‘dream job’ for a living, your whole heart and soul and passion and everything is wrapped up in it, and it’s not fun all the time,” Ganz said. “And a lot of times it pulls out a lot of emotions that you aren’t expecting. And so I think that it would have felt inauthentic to us to not get into those areas.”
Games veteranAshly Burch, who both plays the character of Rachel and serves as a writer on the series, will confirm thatMythic Quest’s take on the process of making a video game rings very true to those who actually do work in the industry. “I know a lot of game devs, and they’re like, ‘This show’s a little triggering, because it’s too accurate.’ Which I take as a massive compliment… I had another friend, who’s a creative director, who watched the pilot episode, and when Ian throws a tantrum and storms out after that big group scene, he was like, ‘Ooh, that’s me.’ It made him look at himself a little bit more.”
As she continued, “It’s really great because for me personally coming into the writers’ room, I had a little personal mission, but it was also the mission of our fearless leaders, Megan, Rob, and David, to make something that felt accurate and honest to the games industry, while still being funny and acceptable to everyone. So the fact that it’s managed to achieve both of those things is to me a huge victory. Which is that you can watch it knowing nothing about games and enjoy it as a workplace comedy, and if you do know games, you have this extra element of, ‘Oh, that’s pretty true,’ or, ‘Oh, that is me,’ or, ‘Oh God, I worked with that guy,’ which is so great.”
It all speaks to a series that is very comfortable with its subject matter, but also has learned how to elevate it to a new level of universality. Which, again, is a very special combination of elements rarely seen in television — or anywhere, really. Take it from Ennis, as well as one ofMythic Quest’s biggest fans: “My nana really loves the show, which surprises me because the last video game she played was a pinball machine. She really knows nothing about the video game industry. And she doesn’t quite care very much about video games to begin with. But she finds the show really refreshing. She says you don’t have to know anything about video games to enjoy these characters and the comedy that comes from all of them working together.”
Wherever you fall on the spectrum between game industry employee and Ennis’s grandmother, the point is that you’re very likely to find something unique and beautiful about whatMythic Questis trying to say about life, about creativity, and about what it means to be human with each other. Even after all these conversations with the cast and creators, I’m still struggling to articulate why this show is so special. All I can say for sure is that it is.
TheMythic QuestSeason 2 finale premieres Friday, June 25 on Apple TV+.
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