Glitch Productions, the studio behind
shows like The Amazing Digital Circus
and Murder Drones, has just released the
trailer for their upcoming show, The
Knights of Gwennavir. It's created by
Dana Terrace, and with the pilot having
a release date of September 19th, it's
also right around the corner. While
watching the trailer, however, something
stood out to me. The show is clearly
inspired by Disney, and not in the good
way. It's not exactly a secret that
Disney has seen better days as of late.
They have movies underperforming left
and right and new controversies
springing up like weeds. On the creation
level, I would argue that much of these
missteps are the results of poor
decision-making and overreach from the
company executives. Whether that's
inserting things, removing things, or
anything in between, it's clear many
creatives are not happy about the way
the company has treated its projects.
And undeniably, one of the biggest
mistakes Disney has made in this
department in the last 5 years was its
treatment of the Owl House. Whether or
not you were a fan of the show, you have
to admit its cancellation was a mistake
for Disney. The Owl House was originally
pitched in 2016 to three different
networks: Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon,
and of course, the Disney Channel, where
it eventually ended up residing. Disney
was chosen specifically because,
according to Dana Terrace herself, it
seemed more open to queer themes and
characters. Additionally, at the time,
both Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network
mainly wanted to pick up episodic
11minute comedy shows, and that wasn't
the direction Terrace wanted to go in
with her show. On top of all that, it's
not really a surprise she went with
Disney, considering she had worked on
prior Disney Channel shows before, like
Gravity Falls and Ducttales 2017. She
already understood much of how the
studio worked, and she already knew
people there who could work on her show.
Terrace would later retroactively say
that if she had made The Owl House with
a different studio, she probably would
have had a different team, a tighter
budget, and shorter episode lengths. All
of this is to say, Disney seemed like
the perfect choice, but as I'm sure
you've gathered, or as I'm sure you
know, that all went downhill. The studio
initially ordered two seasons of The Owl
House, each one consisting of around 20
episodes. And during the roll out of
season 1, it seemed to be doing well. It
was getting decent numbers, and the crew
knew that they were going to get picked
up for a third season. However, on May
17th of 2021, about a month before the
release of season 2, Dana Terrace
announced some very tragic news on her
Twitter page. In response to someone
congratulating her on season 3, she
said, "This is a shortened order from
our expected 10 to 20 episode pickup. It
was unexpected and focusing on this
situation was the main reason I left
Twitter a while back." Someone then
followed that up by asking if that meant
season 3 would be the final season, and
Dana Terrace confirmed it. Basically,
what happened was that despite the show
doing well and building towards a third
season that Disney seemingly wanted to
do, Disney decided to can it, giving the
show only three more episodes to finish
up its whole story while citing that the
show no longer fit their brand. Many Owl
House fans initially interpreted this to
mean that Disney was cutting the show
because of its queer representation, but
Dana Terrace herself later confirmed
this to be false. In my personal
opinion, it seems much more likely that
the show was cancelled because of
panicked executive decisions during the
pandemic. Anyways, while season 2 was
rolling out, Dana Terrace said this
about the cancellation. The meeting was
extremely frustrating because we were
doing well. We were getting decent
numbers. It didn't make sense,
especially during a time where the
studio should have been supporting crews
and artists and their production staff,
and we were getting none of that on top
of the show getting cancelled. It was
just so much. And it took a while to
recover from that creatively. It was
only after cancelling the show that
those executives realized that they had
made a mistake. Dana Terrace would go on
to say, "At first, the executives would
see the show trending every day on
Twitter and be like, oh, anyone can
trend on Twitter. That doesn't actually
mean anything." But seeing the views on
YouTube and seeing the people who came
to New York Comic-Con gave them a much
better idea of, "Oh no, the show is
actually successful." Unfortunately
though, by the time those executives
realized this, the show was already
cancelled. Dana Terrace was obviously
frustrated with this. She did everything
right. She made a show for them which
was successful and then they canled it
only for them to later realize that they
judged it too quickly. They had made a
mistake. The thing is this mistake
messes up people's jobs, their
livelihoods, their art, and their
passions. How could Disney make a
mistake like this? They literally had
all the viewership numbers and stats
right in front of them. This is
executive incompetence. And since then,
Dana Terrace has stated multiple times
that she would not make a season 4 of
The Owl House if given the chance. Now,
this is the part of the story where
Glitch comes in. On January 17th of
2025, a new independently animated show
is announced. It's called The Knights of
Gwenny, and one of its creators is none
other than Dana Terrace. The studio
behind it is Glitch Productions,
possibly the largest and most popular
indie studio in the whole world. At the
very least, it's top two. and they're
known for basically letting their
showrunners make whatever the heck they
wanted as long as it wouldn't get banned
off YouTube, meaning it has a lot more
creative freedom than Disney ever did.
Outside of her Owl House artwork, Dana
Terrace had always been known for
drawing some pretty disturbing things,
particularly body horror. You could see
that inspiration in the Owl House, but
obviously because of the show's
demographic, she could never go that
crazy with it. But now in this teaser
for Glitch's Nights of Guyavir, you can
see that horror in full display. At
Disney, Terrace had been restricted both
in the episodes, as I've just recounted,
but also in it being a family show. Now,
she's basically free and can do what she
pleases. And most importantly, there's
no executive meddling. This isn't all
about Dana Terrace, however, as I'm sure
you noticed, there's two other names on
the Knights of Gwenny creators credit.
Those being John Bailey Owens and Zack
Marcus. The first wrote on Future Worm
and the second wrote on Star Versus the
Forces of Evil, but most importantly,
they both also wrote on the Owl House,
so they all have that bad work
experience. Yesterday, we finally got
the trailer for The Knights of
Gwennavir, and it could not be more
obvious that it was made by a bunch of
artists who were screwed over by Disney.
The trailer opens up to a view of a
theme park with a large statue of a
princess overlooking many castles. It's
clear that this park is themed around
the princess, but as the narration
suggests, this was a long time ago. A
little girl is seen walking towards a
bed in a large room surrounded by gifts.
From the following scenes, it's safe to
assume that none other than the mascot
of the park, the princess herself, is
the one laying in the bed. Another shot
of the bed shows it surrounded with
medical supplies, and the narration
describes the princess being trapped by
machines running on blood and fear.
Then, suddenly, the old film burns away,
and we presumably cut to the modern day.
The park is run down and covered in
trash and graffiti. We get a shot of the
little girl pulling on a vital of this
living princess machine as an older man
stands above her. We get another shot of
this older man later on. It seems to be
a video of him from long ago. He dresses
the camera and tells the audience to
meet the different versions of the
princess. If you zoom in, one of these
versions is a liveaction version that
nobody asked for. Another one is a doll.
But then all of the scenes cut away and
we're left with a series of much more
violent ones as the show's logo grows
towards the audience. While watching
this, it's impossible not to compare it
to Disney. The parks with the castles
and princesses long past their glory
days. Scenes of this man who you could
argue does bear some resemblance to Walt
Disney. And then of course this jab at
liveaction remakes, a very clear
reference to Disney's most recent
obsession. Glitch also put out a very
brief summary alongside the trailer,
saying, "Knights of Gwynavir is a
psychological thriller that welcomes you
to a planetwide theme park in the clouds
and the shadows below where a broken
princess android is two dreamers tickets
to better lives or the end of them."
This reads exactly like a corporate
monopolistic dystopia to me. I mean, a
world that looks like this that was also
a planetwide theme park. Just look at
the residents present day. Clearly,
whatever company this is didn't care
enough for the common man. Or at the
very least, the company abandoned them
when things got tough. Maybe that was
when the pinned I'm sorry, I mean when
the animatronic princess died. I'm
drifting a tad into theory territory
here, but I think you can see the
parallels I'm drawing to the Owl
Houses's team's own experiences at
Disney. And regardless of what we think
of that last point, I think we can all
agree that this is clearly inspired by
Disney and not in the good way. It was
around 10 years ago now that Dana
Terrace first started working on what we
know today as the Owl House. What many
people don't know, however, is that the
show didn't exactly come from the purest
of intentions. She had shown a very
early version of the story to a writing
partner who called it boring and said
that nobody would watch it. And it was
out of spite that Terrace created the
15-page pitch bible that would be used
in pitching the show to studios. So, I'm
just saying if Dana Terrace was able to
create an entire successful TV show out
of spite because someone called the idea
boring, just imagine what she's going to
Chrome Uzantısı