As noted, Lucha Underground Executive Producer Eric Van Wagenen recently spoke with Marc Madison for The Richest, and talked a bit about the direction for season two of the show.
Read More: Lucha Underground Season Two To Feature More Sci-Fi Elements
Van Wagenen also talked about the show was originally brought from concept to reality, what to expect from season two, including the show’s direction and wrestlers they may look to introduce, and much more. You can read a few excerpts below:
How did Lucha Underground start?
I got a call from the Mark Burnett development team and they had said that they were in discussions with the El Rey Network on creating an updated, more US friendly version of Lucha Libre.
My experiences had really been in reality television, but I have crossed over into the wrestling world with the Stone Cold Steve Austin version of Tough Enough, I also produced Legend’s House for the WWENetwork. I had done a lot of sort of fighting combat shows like The Contender and Bully Beatdown. So within the Mark Burnett family of shows, I’m kind of the guy they call on when they need a show where people are fighting for better or for worse. I have that little niche covered, but we never really ventured into putting on our own promotion.
My job initially for the first several months was to really pull everything and everyone together on the same page and to try to get everyone to share the same vision. It was really hard at first, it took several months and it took several episodes of taping before we all started to see what was working. But the original concept came from the El Rey Network, one of the original shows that they wanted to develop was a Lucha Libre product that was a little more updated and made for second and maybe third generation Mexican Americans.
What can fans expect from season two of Lucha Underground?
I think one of the more interesting ones that I think will be what will happen with the Dragon Aztecacharacter and with the Dragon Azteca mask. Who will carry the mantle? One of the legendary myths that we play with is the idea of the seven Aztec tribes. Clearly one of those tribes is Dragon Azteca tribe and will they now seek revenge with Dario Cueto and Black Lotus? That obviously comes to mind. Mil Muertes and Catrina taking over the temple and possessing all of the original Aztec gold is obviously a major storyline. Dario Cueto on the run and what that means for the temple and his future makes for a great storyline.
Obviously everyone’s favorite Pentagon Jr. who has been unleashed and on the loose and how we handle that – especially with his relationship with Vampiro. That is definitely something that a lot of people are going to want to know and we’ll be addressing that in the early episodes as well. We’ll eventually get around to answering all the questions we posed in Ultima Lucha some might have to wait a few weeks before we get to them, but it won’t be in a way that is predictable. I’ll just say that. (chuckles) We are very unafraid to try things. We got away with a lot in season one, but we have a lot of goodwill with our fanbase. We’re hoping that our fans will trust us enough to grow and build and resolve in least predictable way as possible.
Do they want to add anymore specific wrestlers to the roster?
I can say we are looking for more females. We have Sexy Star and Ivelisse, and Ivelisse had a broken foot for half the season. It’s no secret that were hoping to work something out with Triple A and with ReyMysterio. But we’re hoping that a lot of our guys are coming back. Not everyone is coming back, but were hoping that a lot of them will.
It would be slightly hypocritical to say we have to only have Latin talent. Obviously we want to have people that can Lucha and who are familiar with the style. At our core, and in our name it’s LuchaUnderground, but we look for versatility. We look for guys that, if not trained in classical Lucha style like a lot of our Triple A guys are, we at least want them versatile enough where they can work the lucha style.
That’s why guys like Prince Puma and Johnny Mundo and even Brian Cage are fairly valuable to us because they can go with anybody. They can go with the American wrestlers and they can go with the lucha guys and everybody looks great.
Personally, I kind of like the guys that don’t fit the mold. Guys like the Willie Mack and Matt Cross. Guys that don’t fit, what you would consider the WWE standards. We’re not trying to compete with them. We are trying to compete in the areas where they are not.
