One of the most anticipated projects to be showcased at the 2026 Annecy Animation Festival is the second season of “Common Side Effects.”
The ongoing session provided a first look at the show. Creators Joe Bennett and Steve Healy, along with director Camille Bozek and executive producer Benji Brook of Green Street Pictures, also explained how season 2 sought to expand on season 2 both in terms of narrative and aesthetic scope.
New footage from the Season 2 premiere picks up right where Season 1 ended, with Marshall (Dave King) and Frances (Emily Pendergast) trying to find the best ethical, grassroots way to distribute Blue Angel, a blue luminescent mushroom that has the ability to heal any wound or disease.
The clip features them hiking in Joshua Tree and intersecting with DEA agent Harrington (Martha Kelley), who is chasing them on a motorcycle. After a tense confrontation, the next scene follows a montage of Marshall and Francis traveling to Oregon, playfully scored by Roy Orbison to “The Blue Angel” (Marshall is shown hitting a high note before the game is interrupted for snoring).
During the panel discussion, Brooke described the series as “a thriller series that plays on the history of thrillers,” and went on to say, in loose terms, that if the first season was “The Big Lebowski meets Michael Clayton,” the next season is trending towards “The Insider meets Indiana Jones.” (Erin Brockovich is also mentioned repeatedly).
In an interview with Variety, Bennett and Helly talked about what they envision for the new season. “Season 1 had a propulsive, escapist energy that just hit the ground running,” says Helly. “And in season two, we were trying to experiment with a different kind of tension: We’re trapped in our own space, but what does that space look like?” As Helly explains, this raises a new set of questions about how to hide and stay safe, and who to trust. Of course, this is complicated by a new antagonist named Thomas (voiced by “Scavenger’s Rain” voice actor Bob Stevenson) who was introduced during the panel.
As the team explained during a panel discussion, Thomas is envisioned as someone who already has a relationship with the Blue Angel mushroom and, in Helly’s words, treats it with a religious obsession.
The session discussed the nuances of the character’s design, which was partially inspired by actor Dave Bautista, with a permanently furrowed brow and accentuated “thick hands.” There are also new allies, including Eutychus (voiced by Matthew Maher), a bookstore owner and friend of Marshall’s who wears a “downbeard.” Throughout their discussion of Eutychus, the team also commented on how “so much of this show is about very specific people and very specific problems” was reflected in the acting, Brook said, which was reflected in the animation’s emphasis on hand gestures as a means of expression.
As well as a variety of new characters, the new season also introduced new environments. Marshall and Frances travel to the Pacific Northwest, where they will be based for most of the season. “One of our great backgrounders is from there,” says Helly, “and there’s a kind of eerie, paranoid quality to it. These places are very foggy, some of them are a bit rundown, you know, the fishing and logging industries are gone, there’s a lot of empty storefronts, and strange wanderers gather.” In addition to enjoying the atmosphere of the actual site, the new season also allowed for an expansion of the metaphysical spaces known as “portals.” This space is a dream-like environment in which all those who ingest Blue Angel mushrooms are connected, and even to each other.
“There’s a lot more exploration going on in the portal world that Marshall is trying to do,” Bennett told Variety. “There’s something really cool about how each type of experience in Portal is tailored to that person,” he continued, adding, “There’s a relic of the real world, like an inner spirit,[but]it kind of feels old and ancient.” This space gave us a little more freedom to add surrealist animation to show the strange remnants of the real world set in an otherworldly desert. “What if that’s just the surface,” Bennett teases about the exploration the team will undertake in season two.
The backgrounds, both the real and metaphysical locations in the show, are all hand-painted, but the number of paintings and montages in the show meant that a lot of time was spent on what was noted. “They’re amazing painters,” Bennett said of the art team, praising their research and attention to detail. “Then we’ll be doing more of the surreal elements. It’s taking some really fun liberties. That’s a big part of the show, more than ever. It feels like something human-made. It’s not computer-generated, it’s not AI, and it feels really good.”
During the ongoing session, Brooke doubled down emphatically. “Green Street Pictures will never, ever, ever use AI. We won’t let the oligarchy steal our future. Fuck AI, boycott AI,” he said, to thunderous applause (“Are you running for something?” another panelist joked).
This anti-oligarchy perspective, Brook points out, is reflected in the first season of “Common Side Effect,” an elegant satire of the ruthless capitalism of the U.S. health care industry that pitted Marshall against various parties seeking to exploit his discoveries for financial gain. Season 2 continued this thread, with Helly reflecting on the weariness of living in this corporate world. “It’s like brand fatigue. Characters have been stuck with a product for so long that we don’t know what to do with it. How can we recycle this into something new?”
Of course, trying to break out of this system creates complications. “Humans tend to spend a lot of time thinking about how they can build something so quickly, and not really understanding what the impact will be,” Bennett added. “And when you watch it, you see how something like that plays out and who’s in charge and how it falls apart. I think that’s an important part of the show. It’s just people fumbling with it.”
“Common Side Effects” Season 2 is scheduled to release on Adult Swim in early 2027.
