DOC HAMMER: It’s a double-edged sword. Jackson and I, every once in awhile, we go back to that old Venture playbook. We’ll dig in and do some crappy Johnny Quest-style adventure and have everything go wrong. Then there are other times when we realize what a rich universe we—how many characters do we have Jackson? 200?—it’s a crazy amount of rich characters who all have very rich relationships with each other. Sometimes that’s really exciting and at other times it can hurt, so it’s a bit of both.

JACKSON PUBLICK: We’re constantly kind of expanding and contracting. We used to save that for finales and bigger occasions, but our continuity has gotten built up so much that it’s just exciting to pay service to all of that and make sure the relationships all stay intact. Then we inevitably end up with some massively complicated big finale and then when we’re starting the next season the last thing that I want to do is do that. You know?

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It’s like, “Let’s do a one-off episode!” But every time that we try to do an episode that feels more like seasons one or two, at least in terms of plot conventions, it’s kind of more exciting than it used to be because we have seven seasons worth of development. So to be able to hit simpler stories, but still keep in mind everything that we’ve learned about the writing and the characters in the mean time and explore these ideas in a new context have become really satisfying to me. What’s the season seven version of a one-off episode? And it turns out it’s a better show than season one was.

I really loved how a lot of last season reinforces how strong a team The Monarch and Gary have become. Did it feel important to pay that relationship service and is there more growth in that department in season eight?