Hi I’m Sandra Equihua.
I’m Jorge Gutiérrez.
And I’m going to take you
through the final Maya battle scene.
Shot by shot.
Good Shot, muchachos!
I just about had enough of you.
Give up now!
As you can see this is one of the big
sort of mood changes in the final battle.
Our heroes think they’re winning,
as you can see the sun is shining down on them,
the armies are there together.
And our villain, Lord Mictlan,
basically reveals ‘you really think I came alone?
I brought my own army’.
All our heroes are now terrified,
everybody’s freaking out,
the sky has changed from light to dark.
It was nice knowing you guys.
Ay carumba!
A few minutes before
they thought they had this in the bag,
so we unleash a skeleton
Conquistador army
As you can tell it’s breaking the frame,
the tide has officially changed.
The iconography of a Conquistador is basically those hats,
that’s a very scary image
for a lot of people from that region of the world.
And just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse...
I’m afraid to say it, but, can this get any worse?
Rico!
We also have giant skeleton monsters coming.
When we designed these,
I had no idea how they we’re gonna move
and whether they’re gonna be readable.
But everything was just so well displayed
I’m sorry
This was very much inspired by
movies like Lord of the Rings and Seven Samurai,
everybody’s feeling pretty confident on the evil side
and then as an eagle flies behind Maya,
she gathers the strength
of all the daughters of these kingdoms...
Together we can triumph!
We are all the true prophecy!
All four kingdoms, fighting as one!
Each finger is weak, but together...
We are a mighty fist!
This moment is awesome because you get to hear
Queen Latifa, Isabela Merced and Carolina Ravassa
and Zoe Saldana.
This is the moment of glory,
all the characters come together as a whole
and they function as a fist.
And today the sun will cheer our victory over evil!
So Maya now leads everybody in this charge,
the villain controls the frame
that’s why the aspect ratio opened up
and now you see the final battle really begin.
Show them the might of the Jungle Lands!
Barbarians!
Ribbit!
We also reveal a little telanovela moment
where Gran Bruja gets hit
and we reveal
she’s been having a relationship with one of her
brjuo men when calls her ‘mi amor’
and the other wizards are like ‘mi amor’!?
Being that we grew up in Mexico,
it’s inevitable you know?
You’re gonna wind up with a telenovela
on your screen at one point in your life,
so yeah that’s a little tip of the hat
to telenovelas in Mexico.
Grand Bruja!
This is also a moment where we reveal that
Chimi is in love with Rico.
Better not die Rico!
Because I think I love you...
You shut your snouts right now!
True to Chimi’s personality,
she’s like ‘quiet you!’
Stephanie Beatriz, really a brilliant performance,
Chimi is a very very complicated character
and I think Stephanie really nailed that side of her.
There’s just too many of those things mi amor.
I fear the tide is turning.
You stay, I...I can join the battle.
Very well, go help Maya.
Always a kid at heart
ready to go like he’s going to go off to a party.
The Queen supporting his every idea.
We unleash the King,
so he gets to join the battle
and we get to say one more of the good guys
is gonna help out.
Things are starting to look good,
and then sure enough,
that’s when the Queen realizes she’s about to give birth.
A lot of screaming from me here!
I got this one Chimi!
Rico!
I don’t got this....
ta da.
Here we see Rico have a moment
where he’s finally reunited with the Gran Bruja,
the Gran Bruja didn’t believe in him at all.
But in this moment you can see Rico’s leg is broken,
the Gran Bruja is hurt
and Estefan is trying to help out
and becomes a crutch for him.
And this is a big moment for Rico where he goes
‘I don’t need a crutch
I can stand on my own and I can be myself’.
She needs you more than me now. Gracias Estefan.
This is so lovely just because we get to see
the Gran Bruja finally like loving Rico
whereas before there was such
you know hatred towards them.
And now it’s Rico’s turn to save the Gran Bruja.
I got this, sana sana colita de rana!
There’s a saying in Mexico,
we say sana sana colita de rana
and it’s what you say to little kids
when they’re feeling bad and you rub their tummy
or you rub their back.
And sana sana colita de rana translated in English is,
‘may you heal because the butt of a frog
will be rubbed on you’.
And so we got to do that visually!
When I read it in the script I thought it was hilarious
but I had no idea how they were gonna do it
and I almost cried,
I thought it was so sweet their little faces
just crawling on La Gran Bruja it was so adorable.
How did you learn to control the peasant magic?
I didn’t, I just go with the flow.
Aren’t you afraid?
It’s okay to be afraid,
what others call my w-w-weaknesses,
they are my strengths.
Allen Maldonado I believe had never done animation
voice acting before so we had a
speech consultant to help out with the stuttering
stuttering was a big part of Rico’s character.
We didn’t want to do the thing where
we implied that he would fix the stuttering,
we wanted to have him
have stuttering be a part of who he is.
By using stuttering
he can cast spells that are more powerful than anyone else.
So the thing that others thought is his weakness
became his strength.
I never should have doubted you.
[Incantation]
Unleash your power gallito!
I don’t know if I can hold it.
This is a big big moment for Rico,
it’s finally all come together for him.
and the Gran Bruja, this great, great witch
finally realizes her father was right
this is the greatest wizard in the world.
And just to prove how great of a wizard he is
we wanted to go alright,
well what does that even mean in this universe?
And so we unleash Rico’s magic in this moment.
And here we see Rico just like,
becoming stronger and stronger
because he believes in himself now,
he found himself.
Academia magic is yellow,
peasant magic in our world is purple.
I’m a big Prince fan so it’s a total nod to Prince.
So he takes the prophecy symbols
the eagle, the skull, the rooster and the puma
and he creates these giant golems
and they’re basically my love letter
to Japanese giant robot movies
As they all come together
and you can see the prophecy now personified
by these crazy giants.
You got this Rico!
That’s my human!
You know it.
By my father’s beard,
you really ARE the greatest wizard who ever lived!
Come and get some baby!
Rico gets to show off all his crazy magic
and now the giants fight.
Wow, I didn’t know Rico could do that!
The script for this episode was really,
really hard to write.
I don’t think I’ve cried more writing anything,
it’s the last episode so I’m also saying goodbye
to this world and I’m saying goodbye to these characters
so it was very very emotional.
And then the complexity and ambition of the episode
was so crazy, that when I turned it in
I basically ran away
because I didn’t want to hear,
‘you can’t do this’ or, ‘this is too nuts’.
But I think most people were really excited
and a lot of us felt like Maya,
like the odds are against us
but we’re gonna get this thing to work
and we’re get this thing to matter.