INTERVIEW: ‘Aquabats’ reunite for season two!

The Aquabats are back — blue shirts, black goggles and musical instruments intact. The superhero bandmates star in The Aquabats! Super Show! on Hub Network, with season two set to premiere Saturday, June 1 at 1 p.m. Taking a break from their crime-fighting, series executive producer Jason deVilliers and Ricky “Fitness” Falomir, both with connections to Nickelodeon’s Yo Gabba Gabba!, were ecstatic to talk monsters, mayhem and Utah.

For dedicated fans, season two will feel slightly different than season one. For starters, the ‘Bats are no longer jumping and high-kicking around Orange County, Calif. DeVilliers and company moved the production from SoCal to Salt Lake City in search of varied locations and beneficial tax breaks.

“We wanted to change the scenery,” deVilliers said recently during a joint phone interview. “The location up in Utah has been amazing, and we did have the liberties because of the tax incentives that they’ve got up here in Utah to expand our budget a little bit. And you know our budget for the show isn’t huge, but we always wanted to do more. We always wanted to have more explosions, more chases, more big monsters. And I just feel that … we were able to do that with the episodes that start this Saturday.”

DeVilliers, also credited as co-creator, writer and director, said he’s excited for the guest celebrities who helped the Aquabats this season, including Tony Hawk and My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way. Hawk plays a journalist in the first episode of the season, while Way actually co-wrote an episode with his brother Mikey. DeVilliers is excited to have “cool celebrities” and “awesome monsters” by his side.

For Falomir, drummer for the band, the second season of Super Show! allows extra time to be with his gang of friends/musicians, a group of fellows he knows well. “As far as being on screen, I feel like the five of us, all the other Bats, I think that we’re all just a little more comfortable with the whole process of, you know, being on TV and the whole thing,” said Falomir. “We were able to have a little more fun, you know. We were more relaxed.”

Much like deVilliers, Falomir pointed out that the new season has a “lot more explosions.”

“So I think these five episodes are going to really reflect what we were able to get away with it,” he added. “The second time around, I feel like we may have nailed it a little more. Definitely excited to see what people think about the upcoming episodes.”

Aquabats fans should expect the new TV season to feature that balancing act between family entertainment and pop culture references that will produce laughs among adults. Whether an homage to the original Batman TV series or a nod to John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Aquabats! Super Show! has a little bit of everything for everyone.

“I think we’ve barely scratched the surface,” deVilliers said. “I think that a whole world can be discovered with what we’re all capable of creatively. We just need the platform to explore it. I think we’ve barely scratched the surface on this, especially in the way people are responding to it. They get it, which is a huge step for us because it’s a risk making a show like this. ”

Grab the goggles. Find the blue spandex. Leave all shame at the door. The Aquabats are back.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

• The Aquabats! Super Show! airs 1 p.m. on Saturdays on Hub Network.

(Please note: An earlier version of this article misidentified Ricky Falomir as another Aquabat.)