If you think you’ve cracked every detail in Wendell & Wild,You might be wrong. To all spooky stop-motion enthusiasts, you’ll be delighted to know that tacked on to the film’s almost two-hour runtime is a sneaky post-credit scene with our favorite character.
The trials and tribulations that a young hell maiden experiences. Wendell & Wild introduces us to Kat Elliot (Lyric Ross) a teenage, demon-summoning badass who’s on a mission to save her parents and her town with two gloriously chaotic demon brothers, Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (Jordan Peele), by her side. The film’s eerily fantastical adventure is beautifully animated through director Henry Selick’s speciality, stop-motion, and its end (and post) credits are all just one giant love letter to the timeless craft.
Concept art is the first step. Wendell & Wild’s end credits take us through the film’s animation process. From sneak peeks of initial character designs, all the way to behind-the-scenes footage of building the film’s puppets (they’re huge). But the film’s post-credits scene is perhaps the true cherry on top of all that animation adoration. A short but stunning scene depicts an animator in his home, who wakes up in the middle night due to a fight. He gets up to go explore his at-home studio only to discover our beloved Kat wandering about our Land of the Living.
Her little peek-a-boo is the cutest thing ever and will be sure to delight the film’s younger audiences, but is also a touching tribute to the relentless work of their animation team. It’s an ode to how much time they spent working on the film while adapting to the pandemic’s at-home requirements — and the unique impact of stop-motion animation in breathing a type of life into characters that other mediums within the field simply can’t.
Stop-motion can be a tedious process. Filming a stop-motion scene with an iPhone is even more difficult. Yet, the dedicated creators are behind it. Wendell & Wild We still had to give her this sweet stinger to add more reality to the adorable Kat. Who knows what hellish havoc she’ll get up to in our world.
