The Darkening was the least of Thra’s worries when a fire broke out on the set of Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.
Most unfortunately, the destructive blaze occurred before it was time to shoot the finale’s big battle sequence between the Gelflings and Skesis.
How a Fire Nearly Doomed Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance
As a result, “every single puppet was on set,” series director Louis Leterrier recalled in Daniel Wallace’s 2019 book The Art and Making of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. “I soaked a T-shirt in water and wrapped it around my face and ran in to grab puppets. I was running through water and jumping over sparking fuse boxes just to save them, because if the puppets went, we wouldn’t have a show.”
Three different firefighter crews responded to the call and once the fire was out, the crew discovered the set was not as badly burned as they initially feared. Ironically, however, the overhead sprinklers meant to extinguish the flames had caused more damage to the puppets (especially the animatronic heads built for Aughra and the SkekMal) than anything else.
“It was traumatic,” Leterrier said, “but everyone was very English about it: Keep calm and carry on. In the end, it only put us behind by three days.”
The fact that they got to see the project all the way through feels a little bittersweet in hindsight, considering Age of Resistance was canceled after a single season. After all, the big battle sequence was only the beginning of what the team had planned. In Leterrier’s own words, “Going forward, we have much more to offer our audience.”
“The original film happens in the aftermath of the Age of Gelling, when there’s only two Gelfling left,” producer and writer Javier Grillo Marxuach noted in the book. “Now that could be very sad—or there could be a way to see what happens leading up to that point, and end on a hopeful note. Even if it means losing in one way, we know what our characters must go through in order to win.”
Head of Netflix original series Ted Biaselli further summarized what could have been, “I always felt there was a world that existed fart beyond the movie, with so many stories to be told. For people who have never even heard of The Dark Crystal, by making something that feels like a first step into this world we will create a whole new generation that loves it.”
