Lucha Undergound’s Executive Producer, Eric Van Wagenen recently spoke with The Richest about the show’s second season and more. Here are the highlights…
On Where Things Will Go in Season Two: I think one of the more interesting ones that I think will be what will happen with the Dragon Azteca character and with the Dragon Azteca mask. Who will carry the mantle? One of the legendary myths that we play with is the idea of the seven Aztec tribes. Clearly one of those tribes is Dragon Azteca tribe and will they now seek revenge with Dario Cueto and Black Lotus? That obviously comes to mind. Mil Muertes and Catrina taking over the temple and possessing all of the original Aztec gold is obviously a major storyline. Dario Cueto on the run and what that means for the temple and his future makes for a great storyline. Obviously everyone’s favorite Pentagon Jr. who has been unleashed and on the loose and how we handle that – especially with his relationship with Vampiro. That is definitely something that a lot of people are going to want to know and we’ll be addressing that in the early episodes as well. We’ll eventually get around to answering all the questions we posed in Ultima Lucha some might have to wait a few weeks before we get to them, but it won’t be in a way that is predictable. I’ll just say that. (chuckles) We are very unafraid to try things. We got away with a lot in season one, but we have a lot of goodwill with our fanbase. We’re hoping that our fans will trust us enough to grow and build and resolve in least predictable way as possible.
On The Evolution of the Product: I actually didn’t think we would be so far into the sci-fi realm at this point. I think originally both Chris DeJoseph and I were wanting to be very cautious of how we start to roll out the more supernatural elements of our characters and our storylines. We wanted it to be user-friendly and familiar at first. We knew we were pushing things with the style of vignettes that we were shooting and that would take an adjustment period. So, we didn’t want to lead with a bunch of crazy stuff right off the bat. We wanted to slowly build and dole that stuff out slowly and gauge the audiences’ reaction. Now we have embraced the full theatre of it. I think that that was the biggest shift and risk that we took and it was definitely kind of something that we were nervous about, but we were very pleased with the level to which our fans accepted it. They loved the fact that we weren’t trying to copy the paradigm that the WWE presents or that TNA presents. We were trying to do something that was out there and a little bit fantastic and not so grounded in reality and the response has been great. So, I think we’ll continue to push things. I think we thought that we would be more traditional still at the end of the season one, but that was where we started doing things like having Drago turning into a fire breathing dragon, and Mil Muertes being resurrected, and killing Bael- doing these kinds of crazy things. Once we saw that the audience had an appetite for it than we kind of stepped on the gas.
On Getting a Second Season: As far as what took so long for us to announce? El Rey always wanted it. It was never a case of whether El Rey wanted a second season. It was more about how were we going to pay for Lucha Underground season two at the same level of quality that season one had. We have investors from Mexico that funded the overages in season one and there were some overages, but it’s nowhere near what has been reported and kicked around the internet sites. It was about proving to them that there was a path where we could make the show profitable. There are still some deals that are pending that we hopefully be able to announce soon that will be big and exciting and probably guarantee us a way for us to stay on the air for a long time. For now, we have a path to do season two and we’ve found some ways to make it cheaper, but not lose quality. We are leaving some options on the table for subsequent seasons and additional episodes to happen next summer.
