BNP at NYCC 2018: ‘3Below,’ del Toro’s Follow Up to ‘Trollhunters’

After navigating my way to the Hulu Theater in Madison Square Garden, I was rewarded with a clear sight line of the 3Below panel with Guillermo del Toro at the center of the stage. I have alluded very briefly elsewhere to my love of his previous Netflix series, Trollhunters, so of course I was going to catch a sneak preview of the next chapter in the Tales of Arcadia saga. The Next Chapter Trollhunters is a “cookies and milk type of family series,” according to del Toro, a show in line with the memories of watching Johnny Quest when he was a kid. 3Below similarly takes cues from nostalgia, being a modern retelling of an immigration story. Princess Aja, Prince Krel, and bodyguard Vex are all esteemed members of an alien world. An evil overlord forces them to run. The artificial intelligence on their ship, affectionately referred to as Mother, takes them to literally the worst planet in the solar system. A place where no would ever think to look for them: Earth…yeah, I don’t see any lies there, do you?

As fate and storytelling would have it, the trio end up in Arcadia. Mother disguises them in three personas: a Latino boy, a woman, and a senior citizen. It is now up to them to make it in a town that appropriately enough has trolls and wizards. del Toro and the rest of the producers mention how the entire Tales of Arcadia world was greenlit from the start. They have been writing with the future series in mind. We even got to see Aja and Krel in a late episode of season 3 of T…