‘Mythic Quest’ Understands The Nuances Of The Gaming Industry Better Than Any Show on TV

The first episode of Rob McElhenney and Megan Ganz’s new comedy starts with a shovel. After devoting her career to the wildly successful MMORPG Mythic Quest, its lead designer Poppy Li (Charlotte Nicdao) wants to introduce a humble shovel as her stamp on this game. Instead, Poppy’s modest request is focus grouped and storyboarded to death in a maddening array of meetings that cover everything from the shovel’s backstory to whether players should be able to dig dicks with it. It’s this duel between art and corporate retooling that stands at the center of every minute of Apple TV+’s newest and smartest show. Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet turns the woes of video game development into a Shakespearean saga, complete with some of the best jokes you’ll hear all year.

True to any Shakespearean tale, Mythic Quest revolves around an egomaniac, McElhenney’s Ian Grimm, and his begrudging rival, Nicdao’s electric Poppy. From the show’s first moments it’s clear what the dynamics of this game development studio are. Ian, with his Criss Angel outfits, curse-filled rants, and boundless self-praise, lords over the game he created. Almost every episode includes one moment where Ian flippantly announces an idea, which forces the already overworked and hives-prone Poppy to drop everything and execute his insane vision.

Much like HBO’s Silicon Valley, Mythic Quest is acutely aware of how its particular industry lauds predominantly white, male creators as gods while casting aside anyone who opposes them. Ian even has a Silicon Valley doppelgänger: the intense, hard-living billionaire investor Russ Hannenman (Chris Diamantopoulos). These men are untouchable to the constant frustration of everyone around them.

But underneath its over-the-top office antics, freak-outs, and truly excellent quips, Mythic Quest understands the nuances of its industry better than any other show on television. Over its nine-episode first season, Mythic Quest endures a never-ending series of toils: its servers are overrun with Nazis, its biggest streamer turns away, marketing wants to install a lewd money-grabbing casino. Yet none of these problems are ever handled the way you would expect. Mythic Quest’s increased hate groups aren’t immediately banned because they’re also paying customers. It becomes more profitable to court a preteen boy than ignore his virtual wrath. And as much as Poppy hates the casino, they need it to keep the lights on. Even Ian eventually reveals that he knows, for all of his self-praise, he’s just another cog in this corporate machine.

There’s a delicate balance to making art friendly to capitalism, and Mythic Quest never stops examining that struggle. Yes, each of the employees at MQ are living out their dream jobs of actually making a good video game. But when that vision comes with a never-ending stream of negotiations, concessions, and panic attacks, the series and its characters start to wonder if living out this dream was ever worth the cost.

Poppy, with her abject geekiness and flustered intensity, becomes the clearest guide between these two worlds, and it’s hard to ask for a better one. Nicdao’s hilarious and dejected performance is a standout in every sense of the word.

Speaking of standouts, Mythic Quest is packed with enough comedy and video game credentials to make fans of either ecstatic. Community favorite Danny Pudi embraces his inner Jeff Winger as the heartless head of finance, and comedy darling Aparna Nancherla both wrote this first season and stars as its apathetic developer Michelle. Similarly Ashly Burch, who is best known for her video game voiceover work for Borderlands, Horizon Zero Dawn, Fortnite, and for playing Chloe Price in Life Is Strange, stars as a love-torn tester named Rachel. In an office filled with digital fires and f-bombs, her relationship with Imani Hakim’s effortlessly cool Dana is a joy.

At the end of its first season, Mythic Quest finally decides it’s worth it to continue its saga. Like any video game developer or artist of any kind, the joys of creation outweigh the pains of marketability. But those benefits just barely outweigh the negatives. Seeing these characters struggle and scream to that conclusion is as cathartic as it is entertaining.

Watch Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet on Apple TV+