Ninjago QNA

S11 - S15: Elemental Saga. Go through each of the ninja and their elements, and end up with Golden Power - Lloyd

Up to Lego designers and marketers who come up with a focus character and rudimentary story. Starts with designer concepts, then goes to writers, and back and forth. There is sometimes a struggle, sometimes things are not exactly perfectly aligned. Biggest example - S13 with Geckles and Munce being villains in sets.

Sets are a double edged sword. Provide kids toys to play with early, but it would be nice to hold more things back show-wise.

As time goes on, there is a bigger burden on storytelling as more restrictions come into play - and kids don’t really care about spoilers.

Everything discussed by Tommy isn’t official canon - he doesn’t have the authority to do that. The show and canon books give you the truth - he will give a ton of answers, but they should be considered “could-be-canon.” These were the thoughts that shaped decisions, not the overall canon itself

Will give some ideas on Wu/Garmadon’s aging and who their parents are.

Tommy will still be working at Lego despite leaving Ninjago. Two reasons he is leaving - he is working on a rather big project (a new show for Lego in development for a few years now), and he wanted a chance for others to lead Ninjago and conclude this era of the story. More projects coming from him and Lego to be announced very soon.

CRYSTALIZED:

Vengestone, Overlord, Returning characters, etc.

overall goal of Crystalized - get to the point where they are back to a healthy status quo, if this was the last time these characters appeared, it would be good.

Usage of Inner Steel in finale - Bragi wanted to do the Overture, Tommy liked the song and felt like it had something to say. Discussed with Jay Vincent and Michael Kramer - they liked the idea of the song tying up the season to make it different than what they usually do. Tommy’s choice to put it on the credits.

OVERLORD -

Crystals: no explanation lore wise. They had to come up with a cool look for the Overlord faction for this season and decided it looked cool between them and designers. Bragi came up with the idea that it’s how to bring Harumi back. HOWEVER - that doesn’t mean there isn’t/can’t be a lore reason.

They touched upon it a bit in Seabound. Tommy always thought Ninjago was created by the FSM, but they changed it in SB. There’s always a myth behind the myth of the Overlord - how did he come to this world? Tommy’s original thought - he wonders if that battle between FSM and Overlord ever actually happened. Overlord is the Oni side of FSM - he was trying to get rid of his dark side. That’s the line behind the Overlord saying Garmadon’s powers were a gift from him. Overlord seeped into the land - maybe Vengestone, maybe dark matter, was a part of this. Overlord is the Oni side of the FSM. So how does the Stone Army make sense? It’s unclear. This is just Tommy’s personal idea. That wasn’t the thought at the time, but an idea that developed over time. FSM created a thousand statues of clay that he imbued with the Oni form of himself, and destroy each of them one by one. But in that process, the Stone Army hardened into indestructible material, and the FSM accidentally unleashed the evil part of himself. Entire land is saturated by Overlord - spread to Devourer, which bites Garmadon.

FSM realized he was too powerful - so he split his powers into elemental masters, and created Wu and Garmadon as his final part of the power, giving up his ultimate power. No mother involved - they were his ultimate creation.

Oni Warlords come after FSM before split. Very soon after he left first realm, they tracked him down. Mystake turns on them then.

Questions re: Oni Temple. The balance has been messed up with the destruction of the Oni Temple. There would likely be consequences. But he could also say that there would be balance and peace as a result - it doesn’t really matter at this point and is up to the 2023 writers.

2009 story bible - Tommy wanted info inside, but Hagemans did not want to be restricted by those rules.

FSM picked dragon’s side. Didn’t invest himself in the conflict of the first realm too deeply and left, followed by Oni. Got rid of his Oni side and G/W were all dragon. But then Garm got bit, so he became part Oni/Oni side was unlocked. Lloyd is a mix of dragon, Oni, and human.

Ninjago probably loses 30% of kids each year. There’s always something new, and every new season has to bring something new for kids to continue staying alive and keep things fresh.

Vengestone buyer - when they came up with the idea of Shintaro, it was to put the ninja in a situation where they had their backs against the wall in a mountain of Vengestone - the perfect society was driven by people in mines. Idea naturally led to a buyer - and they didn’t have any particular idea as to who it was, just a seed planted for the future. They knew they had a golden 4 headed dragon and they had to focus on Lloyd. Had to be Overlord and Garmadon, and Bragi came up with five diff ideas for the buyer - Harumi was one of them, which made “fantasy sense.” They “went through everyone”

Old idea Tommy had - Pythor has always been there, just invisible. Took that idea, but used it on Harumi instead.

Designers in Billund said Nya had to come back. Original pitch was that Nya was out to sea, but forgotten who she was and become this force of nature generating a great vortex in the middle of the ocean that drew Ninjago and the Dark Island back together. Two temples bringing together, dark matter coming from dark island to Ninjago - but they wanted to give Nya the agency to bring herself back. Perhaps a bad guy was gathering Vengestone to dump it into the sea to mess with Nya’s mind - one idea. They knew some toys already, but had to fit some logic to it. Crystalized is the structure of Return of the Jedi.

HARUMI

How does Tommy see the character of Harumi and where she ended up?

By interacting with fans over the years, they’ve been very aware of how polarizing Harumi is - some love her, some don’t. Online, Tommy has been adamant that she’s dead. Bragi came up with the idea that she was still alive. Harumi died and was brought back by the Overlord, who has this power - it’s fantasy, don’t question it. They were all going back and forth on this - final conclusion was that they should leave it up to people to decide - similar to the ninja’s ages. Is she redeemed? Is she not redeemed? Her actions do not redeem her from what she did in Tommy’s mind. Same as they did with Ronin at the end of Seabound - they’re next to the commissioner. Audiences can read the character they love or hate however they choose. In this case, Tommy felt it was more important to leave it up to the individual. Tommy’s POV is that Harumi isn’t easily redeemable. In the book, she meets Garmadon for the first time as he is pardoned by the Emperor. Tommy does not believe that would ever happen for Harumi - she’s done worse things.

What happened to the generals? Tommy was surprised people asked - to him, it’s fairly obvious. They are incapacitated and hugely outnumbered. They clearly went to jail/were imprisoned in Kryptarium. Mr. F’s fate is up to interpretation.

MR F:

Not every character they bring in has a backstory. He was a robot Harumi had, and now there’s a new version. Remade from parts or another iteration of the same blueprint - it doesn’t matter. They come up with stories once in a while and it doesn’t make it on screen. Original idea was that Jay went back to hang out with Echo Zane and inspires echo Zane to become a ninja and be a hero.

Small tidbit:

Idea was lighthouse would be filled out of birdhouses he built based on an interaction Tommy had with Jay’s VA on Twitter about Jay making birdhouses

CHARACTER ENDINGS:

Tommy liked the whole Lloyd and Garmadon relationship. Theme of Crystalized was about “coming together.” Had to be more about Ninjago as a whole rather than individual characters. Worked in small character arcs - Skylor and Kai, Jay and Nya, etc. Prophecy of Quanish comes in - it’s about everyone coming together.

Sometimes there’s practicalities with budget. Interestingly - 3D assets erode over time. Elemental Master assets are not 3D models they have access to anymore. Each of them comes with a hefty SFX budget - you’d want to see them fight, say something, and they were all Wilfilm assets and would have to be recreated basically from scratch. They ran out of budget to include them. Surprisingly large amount of budget goes to voice acting. If they get a VA, they may as well have them talk for the entire episode because it’s too expensive. As soon as a NAMED character speaks, cost goes up.

Tommy’s 2 things to change about Crystalized:

1. He has always wanted to do Zane’s PTSD story about the Ice Emperor. He hopes it’ll happen one day, but they are making a kid’s show and they had to do the goofy version of it. Tommy is a storyteller, but he’s a producer of Ninjago. He may pitch an idea a few times, but never will force a writer to do something they don’t wanna do. General consensus in writer’s room was more fun was needed - hence why it didn’t happen.

2. Tommy loved the thing about Garm pushing Lloyd into an Oni thing. He wanted Lloyd to beat Overlord for a minute and a half until seeing his reflection - but they had to balance their chips between either putting more emphasis on the dragon, or the Oni form. They come up with a master plan, and chop up bits at a time. There’s very few instances they can go back and cut stuff because “the train has left the station.”

One scenario had Lloyd destroy Overlord and decimate him after the death of Garmadon. He’s so angry that he’s lost in his Oni form - and he takes the throne. This is shown in the sets. The realm starts falling apart, the balance is completely torn apart - then Nya comes out of the ocean and they have a huge fight. And it’s up for the ninja to fight Lloyd and bring him back, then you have the same ending. There were scenarios where Garmadon died as well, but they decided to just make it nice and tidy.

Note on corrections I.e. Princess Vania vs Queen - Tommy simply forgot/didn’t catch it. Things happen. Garmadon says he was resurrected from Cursed Realm, etc. There’s a fantasy explanation out there that makes sense.

THE RAT:

Tommy is ashamed to say he never picked up on the rat. Maybe an animator at wildbrain put it in because they liked hunted? It could be Mystake? Idk? It’s up for later reveal/fan interpretation.

Original idea in Hunted - as the ninja travel back to the realm, Mystake’s voice was meant to echo throughout it as a suggestion of where people go after death.

DEEP LORE

Start with 10,000 years at the start. Maybe Wu and G are 4-5K? Unclear.

Wu and Garmadon’s aging in the show:

Battle between brothers in within 10 years of the show starting.

These two guys have been in possession of the golden weapons for years. The weapons of creation kept them alive, but now old age is rapidly catching up with them.

Alternatively, since G went into the underworld and they kept balance with each other, then they start to age rapidly.

First realm - were there dragons of all elements? Given the right budget and scope, they’d probably have the dragons of every element.

A dragon is born without an element in the first realm, until it reaches adolescence. Every dragon starts as a wind dragon, and then grows into their own dragon. Neutral - wind. NO dragons of time.

What happened to the 3 Oni generals and why did we only see Omega? 2/3 were destroyed by Mystake, and she was the third. They setup base in Primevals eye, erecting the temple, and hunt goes from there. Mystake encounters FSM, doesn’t kill him, and is talked into switching sides. She kills the others, their masks remain. Only mask of vengeance remains.

Was the usage of the Teapot as a background running gag a deliberate choice, or just a running gag?

First appearance was supposed to be SOG. It was placed in the water where they go to infiltrate the base. The idea was (Tommy pitched, it never happened) - that teapot travels the world and ends up in different places. Became a running production joke. There was never really a plan, maybe they are messing with the audience a bit but they’re having fun with it. Nadakhan was considered for the council, but he is such a weird presence in Ninjago - a few characters remember him, some don’t, letting him out opens up such a huge amount of exposition that needs to happen. They did have ideas that Clutch was about to wish us all away, but he drops the teapot, it breaks, and Nadakhan is freed. What actually happened - Tommy and Bragi jumped clutch in the warehouse and took it from him.

Serpentine Chima - the idea when they did Legends, they made a conscious decision to not include dragons or snakes, as that was reserved for Ninjago. Same for Nexo Knights - so they don’t blend together. Tommy liked the idea that FSM had gone to Chima to populate Ninjago in some way. There’s maybe a Chima story where the snakes are becoming a problem - they are exiled or brought out from that world and sent to Ninjago. When Morro and Lloyd fell into Chima in S5, the Hagemans proposed - but it canonized the connection which started as a fun gag.

Where do you see the Hydro Whippers from Seabound? Are they snakes/eels? No origin story. They were there before FSM came as they helped fight Wojira. They’re not a Serpentine tribe for sure as they were there before FSM. They’re eels/sea creatures. They discussed back in rebooted with the electric eels, calling them Serpentine, but there’s often no bigger reason behind anything they do.

When Wu defeated Krux and Acronix, what happened to them? Tommy loves having a dark horse that at any time, these guys can jump out of the sky. They are spiraling through time - are they caught in a loop, are they going back? It’s unclear. They played with the idea in Golden Legend where you see the Iron Doom in the background as the warrior walks towards the dragon. Maybe that’s the result of a timeline getting destroyed because of what happened there? It’s sometimes fun to ask questions and not give answers.

In the final ep of Hands of Time, you would actually have Wu in the past approach his younger self and tell him that nobody must ever know what happened here - make all the Elemental Masters forget these events. But maybe one master didn’t drink it - and there’s a story idea there.

Samurai X from S7 was Wu from the future - he time traveled back there to help the ninja and was there the entire time.

Jay’s parents is something they never explored. They know what the status is but they don’t know what led to it. There was an idea to have Libber be part of Prime Empire, and it is a regret Tommy has - the season should have been electricity based. It could have been important to get him in the game to harness his power, etc. They had an early scenario where Libber was running from someone, because someone was after him because of his powers. The choice she had to make was give up her powers, so they would hunt her, and not him. They never got to explore it any further as it was too similar to Harry Potter, and also MOTM was tied to parents as well. Convo with Jay and Unagami would have tied more into that story.

Any realms he had concepts for they never did? Realm of Shadows - is that a realm? Idk. Considered “could be canon.” In Way of the Departed there are mentions to Lar being a faker - stuff comes out of things.

Do all skeletons and ghosts originate from Ninjago? Idk. If someone dies in Chima, do they go to the Departed Realm? Tommy won’t go down that rabbit hole - they had several established incidents on going between realms - Dragon, Backdoors, Crystal, Temple, etc. they made a point of Kaiju Protocol by saying they were out of tea. It takes that out of the equation. They had some interesting ideas as to how to reintroduce Traveler’s tea, find Mystake’s garden etc but they never did.

EXTRAS

Ninja’s ages - so many people want to identify with it and make it their own, so he won’t say. It’s up to interpretation. The ninja have to stay relatable to new kids every year.

How did Clouse learn magic? Is he the only dark magic user? Where did the book come from? It is one of those things covered by them not making up a complete backstory on anything if they don’t need it.

What happened to the mailman? The sad thing is that he means more to the viewer than he does to Tommy - they kinda forgot about him.

Tommy provided a list when they did dragon form etc - in prioritized order. He didn’t demand anything, but asked them to do as much as they could. He didn’t want Clutch Powers to be a part of it - anything but him.

What are Kai, Jay, and Cole’s greatest fears? Whether she wanted to or not, Lily put a big burden on Cole with her final words. Cole would be afraid of not living up to that legacy. Jay - losing Nya. Kai - not being liked or included, anything related to his family.

 Tommy may still be working together with Vincent - new Lego show?

What is the deal with the possession reflections? Tommy has one really good idea that he wants to be canonized, so he’s keeping it for himself.

Ice Emperor - Tommy really wanted to do that story. He’s left behind a few ideas and hopes someone picks them up - whether in a book or other media. Ninjago is so ripe for spin-offs and he’s not working on the main show anymore, but he would be open to doing spin-offs. Tommy’s Echo Zane spin-off idea could tie here. They had ideas about how Benthomaar became king, etc. but there’s only so much time.

Garmadon comic - they didn’t know where they would go in Crystalized.

ALT CONCEPTS/PRODUCTION SIDE OF NINJAGO

Golden Army/Fibo/Western: there’s a kernel of a concept that’s presented to kids, and the kids decide what they like. These were all great ideas that were slightly worse than what we eventually got/children select the concepts that they like. They take it to the writing team from there. Lots of heavy lifting is done with the team in Billund from a concept to toy selection. Tommy absolutely did not want to do Prime Empire, it was not one of his favorite concepts, but he eventually came to like it.

How was the shift from 22 to 11? Not something anyone really wanted to do. It wasn’t a creative decision. It was an external network decision to reinvent the show. At the time, the major input was that shorter format was taking off - comedy shows in particular. That’s why most of them were reluctant to the idea. Once the decision was made,

Why was DOTD diff in Chinese? Cultural reasons (spirits/dead) you have to be very aware of in China. They also decided to produce it outside of Denmark. Tommy rewrote the opening scene (Chinese version) to reintroduce the ninja. Let’s present these characters in a way that it was a fresh jumping point. They don’t say anything about spirits or ghosts in the Chinese version. There’s a diff explanation- Tommy doesn’t know. It was an interesting experiment to have 2 prod companies working with the same script.

What would Tommy change? He’s mostly annoyed by continuity errors - uniform changing, shoulder plate missing, etc. Errors show up in different processes of working on it. When you’re focused on image versus sound, etc, things change. In terms of story, he’s pretty happy with what they got.

How does Tommy work? He works with prod companies in Canada, India, writers in US, designers in Denmark - he is the bottleneck of everything production related to Ninjago.

There are a lot of fully fleshed stories sitting in a drawer. An idea never really dies - so you have to be careful with sharing an idea as it can be reborn in a diff format - like Pythor being present in past Ninjago scenes and being swapped for Harumi.

Have there every been anything mandated by Lego that he didn’t want to include? Yes, all the time. Many times they state that certain toys kids really want to get their hands on. Tommy understands the value of putting a toy in the show in a relevant way, but has to really work things into the story. For instance, they had a very hard time fitting Vania’s dragon Chompy into the story. In the story, they made it her dragon. The product is Wu’s dragon on its back - so how do they make that scenario happen in the show? Firestone Mech is another example - they really had to stretch it to cover it in lava and make it reflect the set better.

PERSONAL:

Is there a moment that can be pinpointed to Ninjago’s peak? Alternatively, when was Ninjago at its lowest point, and do you think they did a good job of recovering?

Sons of Garmadon was a considerable leap forward. Hagemans were back, it looked better, etc. it was the result of a collaboration gone wrong behind Wilfilm and a specific vendor at the time. There are explanations as to why Hands of Time wasn’t as great as it should have been. Wilfilm had to figure out new ways to do things after that failed vendor collaboration which resulted in HoT. In their workshops, they rendered out a house with all people involved in Ninjago - where everyone threw in input and the Hagemans and Bragi were there to tie it all together - all of SOG and Hunted was built in one session. Built off of the best parts of the movie and made use of it in the show.

What about Ninjago will Tommy miss the most? Ninjago was a chore to work on - he always spent 10% of his brain constantly thinking about what would happen. He will miss the people and the way Ninjago developed. Regardless, Tommy will want to finish his two books - Way of the Departed and Splinter in the Blind Man’s Eye. You will see him pop up in a few instances in the year to come - he is working on some projects which are loosely Ninjago-related. It’s not the main series, it’s something else that’s very meta, and people will either love it or be very upset about it. Different isn’t bad - always give it a chance!