Wondla is an animated series adaptation of the Search For WondLa book series developed by Bobs Gannaway, produced by Skydance Animation and animated by Icon Creative Studio. It was released on Apple TV+ on June 28, 2024.
The show focuses on a 16 year old teenage named Eva, who finds herself on the planet of Orbona and has to team up with a rag tag group in order to find herself home.
Season 2 came out April 25, 2025, with Season 3 coming out as the final season on November 26, 2025.
Tropes seen in WondLa:
- Adaptation Dye-Job: In the book series, Eva is depicted as having braided blonde hair which turns white when she is mutated by the Vitae Virus. In the animated series, Eva is depicted as having dark hair put in a bun.
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Muthr is a lot more cute looking, being totally redesigned from a messy, clearly mechanical body to a sleek, seamless green one.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Cadmus Pryde doesn't make an appearances until book 2, and Eva isn't even aware of his existence until then. In the show, an interactive hologram of Cadmus appears in the very first episode.
- Adaptational Jerkass: Rovender Kitt warms up to Eva reasonably fast in the books, but in this show, he's initially quite disdainful of her.
- Age Lift: In the book series, Eva is depicted as being 12-13 in the books and in her late teens in the epilogue of the third book. In the animated series, Eva starts the show at sixteen.
- Big Brother Is Watching: When Eva tries to escape New Attica, the Muthr robots and Meelo creepily watch and follow her. The latter outright taunts her in the form of a giant hologram, saying he will find his "friend."
- Character Exaggeration: The major characters of the books were heavily simplified for the cartoon in big ways:
- Eva went from being a curious child who knows she's in over her head, and only occasionally lashes out in anger, to a stereotypical rebellious teen who's filled with excessive confidence.
- Rovender Kitt's annoyance with Eva was exaggerated to it basically becoming his only trait.
- Muthr basically got changed into being the stereotypical doting mother figure.
- Otto went from speaking in limited sentences with one to three words, to speaking in complete sentences but having a childlike personality.
- Company Cross-References: Bob from Skydance's Luck (2022) makes an appearance in an episode as part of a themed pinball game in Queen Ojo's collection.
- Fantastic Racism: Humans are called "devils in the dirt," and Eva has to disguise herself to avoid being outed as one.
- Ragnarök-Proofing: After many years of the Earth being abandoned by humans, long enough for new species like giant tardigrades to evolve, somehow the ruins of New York are still in pretty good shape, with the buildings pretty recognizable. Even the library still has readable books.
- Stylistic Suck: The Sanctuary features a TV show and virtual reality programs from cartoon raccoon Meego and his friends, both of which feature highly basic animation and songs that wouldn't be out of place in a preschool show. This helps symbolize the simplistic worldview that Cadmus Pryde instills in Eva.