WondLa is now available to stream on Apple TV+.
Take a kid-friendly version of Prime Video’s Fallout adaptation, combine it with Max’s spectacular Scavengers Reign, subtract a lot of the violence, and you’ve got WondLa. Alas, if only the results were as fun as that sounds. Within the animated Apple TV+ series, there are some elements that have carried over from Tony DiTerlizzi’s The Search for WondLa, a complex yet still accessible children’s sci-fi novel about life after the end of the world. But for every aspect that hints at how it might thoughtfully build upon the deeper ideas and surprising darkness of the source material, there are many new attempts at expanding the story that go nowhere. Though showrunner Bobs Gannaway is an animation veteran with a résumé full of Disney films and TV shows, WondLa lacks anything approaching the charm and creativity of those projects. Instead, it proves to be a superficial adaptation that merely goes through the motions.
Right from the jump, the way that WondLa looks immediately feels off. The design of the underground “sanctuary” where young protagonist Eva (Jeanine Mason) has been raised is devoid of any of the details present in the book, and the character models often feel stiff. This is most felt with Eva’s robotic caregiver, Muthr (Teri Hatcher), who looks like a knockoff Mii with limited expressions and none of the vibrancy that was present in the illustrations from the novel. Changes are inevitable in even the best page-to-screen translations, but already there’s a sense that this version of WondLa is content to play most things down the middle and avoid taking any risks.
The world outside is slightly better, with brighter colors that pop off the screen, but the designs of the animated landscapes still can’t hold a candle to DiTerlizzi’s striking descriptions. It’s this setting that Eva is thrust into on the night of her 16th birthday, after the sanctuary is attacked by the massive Besteel (Chiké Okonkwo). Guided only by a torn scrap of paper bearing the word “WondLa,” she and Muthr encounter mysterious creatures like the lanky alien Rovender (Gary Anthony Williams) and the telepathic water bear Otto (Brad Garrett) on their journey to find a new home.
WondLa is the second major project from Skydance Animation – following 2022’s lackluster Luck – and it provides a further glimpse of what to expect from the studio under the guidance of disgraced former Pixar and Disney Animation head John Lasseter. Though this series has a stronger foundation than Luck, it also runs into many of the same problems in terms of how it’s put together. (A cutesy reference to Luck doesn’t do it any favors, either.) Both create obstacles that feel like they’re there due to a lack of confidence in and patience with their world-building. A random fetch quest early on in WondLa bogs down the proceedings; you wouldn’t think a seven-episode season where the episodes clock in at under 30 minutes would need padding, but here we are. But the strangest allusion to WondLa’s creative lineage arrives when a character says they’re not flying, but gliding. It’s impossible not to hear this as a rip-off of the iconic falling-with-style scene from Lasseter’s original Toy Story – only without the emotional payoff Buzz and Woody earned.
That lack of feeling is WondLa’s biggest disappointment. Kids are capable of appreciating stories with thoughtful and complicated character dynamics – the popularity of The Search for WondLa proves this. But WondLa misses out on the opportunity to lay out more thoughtful journeys for its motley crew by reducing most of them to broad archetypes: Muthr the nagging matriarch, Eva the petulant teen, and Rovender the ornery loner. Rather than authentically grow and change, they just bicker for the purposes of mostly grating, hit-or-miss comedy. Season 1 ends with a tease for more WondLa on the horizon, which could be promising: DiTerlizzi has two additional books that Gannaway and team might do a better job with. But the way they rush through – and even contradict – many of the key closing notes of The Search for WondLa doesn’t exactly instill confidence.
