Workplace comedies are nothing new but Mythic Quest has managed to tap into something original by setting its story within a video game studio. The series may have taken a minute to find its footing, but a combination of unique character pairings, sharp performances and comedy that draws upon the inside world of gaming has helped Mythic Quest become one of the best originals on Apple TV+.
That momentum has continued into season 3 which picks up some time down the road after Poppy (Charlotte Nicdao) and Ian (Rob McElhenney) depart Mythic Quest to form their own studio, GrimPop. Dana (Imani Hakim) and Rachel (Ashly Burch) have also left their testing roles to study, but MQ is doing just fine under the sole leadership of David (David Hornsby) and his loyal assistant Jo (Jessie Ennis).
Of course, it isn’t long before circumstances bring everyone back together.
Speaking to Kotaku Australia stars Jessie Ennis and Ashly Burch shared that one of the joys of Mythic Quest season 3 was seeing an unlikely friendship grow between their characters, Jo and Rachel.
“It’s a friendship that’s born out of like a couple of pretty broken jerks,” Ennis said. “We’re in a weird spot where Rachel’s hungry and unemployed and so she’s showing up at her old workplace, which makes no sense… And then Jo has been told to take the day off, so we see what happens when Jo doesn’t have anything to do. She’s pretty lost.”
“I think Rachel was a bit holier than thou for maybe like the first and some of the second season, she kind of thought she was above all of these jerks. And now she’s sort of realising that maybe she’s just as bad as everyone else,” Burch added. “I really liked that we were able to do that storyline and get to see the different parts of our characters.”
A lot of Mythic Quest’s appeal does steam from its cast, whose comradery and collaborative creativity expand beyond just the characters we see on screen.
Many of the cast members serve as either producers or writers and, in season 3, a few even took a turn at directing. Rob McElhenney, Danny Pudi (Brad), David Hornsby and Burch all pull double duty as series regulars and directors this season.
For Burch, the experience of directing a Mythic Quest episode was something that really made her “feel solid”.
“I think the thing that I realised about myself in that particular role, directing, is that it really is helpful for me to do a lot of prep,” she said.
“I didn’t have a tonne of nerves on set and I think it was because I was so familiar with the material. It also helps that I’m in the writer’s room. So I can also serve that episode in terms of what comes before and what comes after because I know where we’re headed.”
“So that was a nice thing for me because I come from voice acting, and oftentimes you don’t even get the script until the second you step into the booth. So preparation was not always something that I had the benefit of.”
Well-known for voicing characters in much-loved games like Horizon Zero Dawn, The Last of Us Part 2 and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, Burch revealed how her experiences working in the industry helped shape her role on Mythic Quest, particularly in the writer’s room.
“I mean, there’s a lot of stuff from my own experience that I pulled from,” she said. “There’s so much that’s always happening in the games industry, and it’s great to have that wealth of story to be able to pull from.”
NFTs, the metaverse and a new space-ship-style office (that looks like “the brain of the Apple Store” according to Ennis) are just some of the new ideas Mythic Quest is playing with in season 3. It also helps that the series has input from a video game company itself.
“Every season at the beginning of every writer’s room, Ubisoft gives us a presentation about what’s going on in games. And then I’ll bring up stories that I think are interesting, and our other writer, Humphrey Ker, will bring up stories that he thinks are interesting. So it’s cool that games are always in the DNA of our show,” Burch said.
“It’s really gratifying as a writer and someone that loves games to see how those things intertwine.”
Along with her directing experience, Burch said are a few lessons she’ll take with her from Mythic Quest to her future voice roles in the games industry.
“The thing that I really love about our show is how they’re not really very married to the scripts. If someone improvs something that’s funnier than what was written, that’s what goes in,” Burch said.
“I think games have different requirements and sometimes folks have spent so much time with the script that they really want to make sure that they get exactly what’s in their head. And I like trying to bring that energy of like, ‘well, what if we try this and what if we try this’ to sort of see if we can get surprised by something? Because I think, sometimes, with games, there’s a quality of we’re in guardrails. I think when actors are allowed to go outside of those guardrails a little bit and surprise the writers and the directors, it can lead to really iconic characters and really cool moments.”
Each season of Mythic Quest has notably included a standalone episode that sits outside of the main narrative. Season 1’s ‘Dark Quiet Death’ followed the twenty-year relationship between two video game developers. Season 2’s ‘Backstory!’ went a bit closer to home, following the origins of Mythic Quest’s in-house story writer, C.W. Longbottom (F. Murray Abraham). Both episodes are considered some of the series’ best.
When asked what they’d like to see their characters experience in a standalone backstory-focused episode, Burch said she’d like to explore Rachel coming out to her family.
“This is not canon, but I imagine that Rachel was raised by a single mom, who’s a Thai immigrant, and that Rachel probably knew very, very early on that she was gay. What is it like when a young girl who knows that she’s a lesbian comes out to her immigrant mother who maybe is not used to that sort of dynamic?” Burch said. “I think it would be kind of a bittersweet and interesting story.”
For Ennis, Jo’s backstory episode would be a bit more arbitrary.
“I read in a book about the science of comedy that a paper cut is drama, but falling in a manhole is comedy,” she said. “So if I could write the episode, it would be Jo gets a paper cut, and then what happens following the paper cut that leads her into falling down a manhole?”
A large plot point in Mythic Quest’s previous seasons has been based around the team building a new expansion for their massively popular online game. Burch and Ennis had some ideas of their own as to where a new MQ expansion could go.
“I remember when ‘Dark Quiet Death’ came out, we had like an 8-bit thing. I thought that was super cool,” Ennis said. “I’d love to see like a Mythic Quest TV show 8-bit game.”
“I would kind of want to know like, what other very obviously lifted from the real world things they would be willing to put in the Mythic Quest universe,” Burch said. “Like can they justify having a fast food chain? What would that look like? Could you get like a Diner Dash kind of Mythic Quest? I would play that actually.”
Mythic Quest Season 3 premieres on Apple TV+ this Friday, November 11.
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