EXCLUSIVE: Executive Producer Steve Loter Talks Bringing to Life Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur

Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is set to premiere this Friday, February 10 on Disney Channel. To celebrate, we got the chance to hear from one of the brilliant minds behind the series, Executive Producer Steve Loter. Check out what he had to say below.

The show is set in New York City, like many other Marvel properties. What was the inspiration behind your New York?

“I grew up in New York, in the 80s and 90s in that zone. I was there at the beginning of graffiti art. It was New York prior to gentrification, so I was there at kind of the perfect time where creativity, imagination, and music, art, and poetry, and books were still very vibrant and alive in New York. I wanted to make sure that we could capture that in the show. ‘Cause I’ve seen New York, misrepresented in a lot of animated properties, so I had to make sure it was accurate. We relied on a lot of New York artistic benchmarks—the Andy Warhol silk screening process, Basquiat graffiti art, street art murals—to kind of find the flavor of New York we wanted to capture. ‘Cause I knew that I had to get it right ’cause if I didn’t, I couldn’t go back to New York. They wouldn’t allow me back in. So I had to make sure I did it right.”

What about the design of the show? How did that come to be?

“Well, I think that we wanted to make sure that we were doing something unique. Um, “Spider-Verse” was a huge inspiration for us. It really blew the doors wide open to do superhero animation that looked really specialized and unique. Laurence [Fishburne] and I connected early, and we talked about the vision of the show and what it should look like. And Laurence is a huge comic book fan, so we used that as kind of a springboard for the visual styling, particularly the linework on the- on the characters and the overall look of the show.”

The show has an extremely authentic feel to it. Can you talk a little about that?

“Yeah, absolutely. We currently have an all-female writing room, a very diverse writing room. So a lot of Lunella’s stories in this are based on real-life experiences that our writers have experienced and have put it, you know, now through the lens of Lunella, but it was really important. Authenticity was primary, for sure.”

The first villain Lunella faces is Aftershock, was that always the plan?

Steve Loter: “Being that Aftershock is the first villain in the series, it’s the first real formidable villain that Lunella faces as Moon Girl, we really did wanna encapsulate a lot about what the mission statement was of the series is the one girl makes a difference storyline which is super important. That to have this character coming into the Lower East Side sapping it of its energy, there’s a lot of proverbial notions there to make statement about gentrification. It’s a statement about losing community and neighborhood and connection. It was really important for Aftershock to be the conduit—no pun intended—for that kind of story. But yeah, it was totally intentional. And it’s the daughter of Electro, so that’s always fun, too. But that was the reasons why Aftershock definitely had to be our first villain.”

While creating this show, was it always your plan to make sure that people of all ages enjoyed the show?

“Yeah, it’s a type of thing where animation is for everybody and we wanted to make sure that this show was four quadrant. That’s an industry term which basically means it’s for everybody. It’s for parents, and kids, and grownup kids that may not have kids. it’s for everybody. It was really important for us to make sure that this show, you know, got everyone’s attention and everyone enjoyed it, for sure.”

Can you shed some light on the Easter Eggs fans will see throughout the series?

“You’ll see a couple of MCU characters in the film, in the show. But also you’ll see that some of the characters we have in there are really deep cuts in Marvel Comics, like you really gotta dive into it to actually find. Like, oh my gosh, they used this character from this run of one comic in the 70s. We love doing that because we always find the right character to fit the right thematic element for that episode. There’s a lot of easter eggs, not just in backgrounds, there’s all over the place, even in some dialogue, in some other places. Just stay tuned. Make a list ’cause there’s quite a few, ’cause we’re big fans, too.”

As we wrap, the series has already been renewed for a second season. How does that feel?

“What a great feeling because we knew we had more stories to tell. As Season 1 goes on, the story gets more serialized. You see kind of an antagonist kind of rise up from the background. We felt like there was so much story to tell. I mean, we’re hoping for past Season 2 because we feel like Lunella Lafayette has a lot more stories to tell.”

In case you miss the premiere on Friday, you can check out all the episodes February 15 on Disney+!

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Photo credit: Disney/ PictureGroup