Fred Tatasciore, the voice actor who has played the Hulk for 15 years, cried while recording his lines for Beast Animations’ new season. That reaction, from a man paid to perform emotion professionally, tells you something about how much had changed since the pilot. Jimmy had spent seven million dollars to make sure it would.
The original 30-minute pilot, called Beast Labs, landed with mixed results. Viewers were honest: the episodes lacked a real storyline, the characters felt flat, and nothing made anyone feel much of anything. That feedback, rather than being brushed aside, became the entire blueprint for what came next.
250 artists, 16 countries, and over 140,000 hand-drawn frames
Jimmy’s first instinct was to animate it himself. The response from everyone around him was immediate and unanimous. He needed a team. So he recruited 250 artists from 16 countries, including Adam, who works from Australia, and the team got to work producing over 140,000 hand-drawn frames, every single one of them drawn by hand.
The writing room got an equally serious upgrade. Jameel Saleem, who writes for South Park and Bob’s Burgers, joined the project and set the tone from the first meeting. ‘Our rule from day one was character first,’ Saleem explained. ‘You can’t just throw them into fights. You have to make the audience care about who wins.’ Connor pushed hard for the characters to get out of the lab and into the world, and they did: deserts, cities, malls, and car chases. Saleem described episode three as basically a Mad Max movie.
A voice cast that includes the Hulk, Hera from Star Wars, and names from the world of animation
Beyond Tatasciore, the show brought in the voice of Hera from Star Wars and some of the biggest names in animation. Creators Sketch and Valkyrae appear in episode one. The character Panthar, voiced separately, carries some of the series’ darkest story beats. Even Nolan and Tareq, both familiar from the wider MrBeast world, made the cast, with Jimmy noting that Nolan had been given a noticeably cooler animated design this time around to help with what Jimmy called his ‘girlfriend situation.’
Every character detail was treated as intentional. One of the animators noted that when the character Panthar is sad, his ears physically drop to the back of his head. The creative team pushed back against anyone who assumed the show was aimed at young children. ‘They have NO idea what’s about to hit them,’ one writer said flatly.
Season 2 runs over 100 minutes total across its episodes. A teaser drew comments from viewers comparing the animation quality favorably to Invincible, a comparison Jimmy claimed to find baffling but did not exactly argue against.
A sneak peek that made the room go quiet
A clip from the new season was previewed, featuring a character named after super speed, a roaring creature, and a running sequence full of texture-based comedy that escalated into full chaos. The room’s reaction when it ended was loud.
Episode one was set to drop on November 1st.
Tatasciore, the man who voiced the Hulk across 15 years of animated projects, sitting in a recording booth and crying at a storyline built by a team of 250 artists across 16 countries, all working on a show that started because viewers said they did not feel anything.
Seven million dollars and over 140,000 hand-drawn frames later, he felt something.
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