Guillermo Del Toro's Trollhunters Gets Two Spinoffs

Turns out that Trollhunters was just the beginning of an expanded universe straight from the mind of Guillermo del Toro.

The visionary director of Pan's Labyrinth and Pacific Rim confirmed to Entertainment Weekly that his animated Netflix series Trollhunters will have two spinoffs coming in the next two years. It's all part of the Tales of Arcadia trilogy.

The first spinoff is called 3 Below, and it follows "two royal teenage aliens and their bodyguard who escape their home planet during a coup by an evil dictator and end up crashing on Earth." They're each given disguises that are parables about the "marginalized," according to del Toro. "The mothership says, 'I will give you the shape of people who are invisible, that nobody looks at. So she turns the prince into a Latino boy, the bodyguard into an elderly man, and the princess into a girl." 3 Below arrives in 2018.

That series will be followed in 2019 with Wizards, which "unites all three mystical storylines, with magical heroes engaged in a battle that will determine the fate not just of our world, but also the troll kingdom and the alien world." 

There have been clues all along. "In the early season of Trollhunters, we already introduced characters you don't know how important they are for the [other] two series, that have been in the planning for years," del Toro said. "Wizards tracks down the whole backstory of Trollhunters and much, much more and brings  all of this group [of shows] to a conclusion."

Del Toro explained the genesis of the project like this: "The idea was to create three interconnecting series that shared a mythology. When I was kid growing up in a small city in Mexico, I thought everything was going to happen there. When I was in seventh grade, we went into the sewers with flashlights and crossed the whole city. I don't recommend it! But we crossed the city from beneath, and that's where Trollhunters come from."

Meanwhile, the second season of Trollhunters will hit Netflix on Dec. 15. In the trailer, we see a map that shows how the town of Arcadia has connections to the other supernatural realms.