'Big Mouth' Season 4: Nick Kroll confirms the kids will grow up

“Bart Simpson is Bart Simpson is Bart Simpson is…” Big Mouth voice actor Jason Mantzoukas rambled during a New York Comic Con press event. “They’re not like other animated characters who are frozen in time,” he said of Big Mouth’s cartoon characters.

The Simpsons is easily the most glaring example of a classic animated series trope: The characters never age or change all that much. Even Morty Smith from Rick and Morty looks the same he did five years ago, forever stuck in the early days of high school. These characters are often stuck in permanent stasis so the writers can keep telling me stories without advancing time. It’s the very nature of procedural storytelling, and according to Big Mouth co-creator Nick Kroll, that was never the plan for an animated series that’s all about growing up.

“A show about puberty feels like it owes the evolution that we see the kids change,” Kroll said at a Big Mouth NYCC press conference, confirming that as the show proceeds towards Season 6 (already confirmed) and perhaps explores even beyond, we’ll see the characters grow up physically as they become young adults in high school.

“The joy is that we don’t have to do it too fast like in other coming-of-age shows where kids physically mature,” Kroll said. “As we age them, we’ll continue to have these kids deal with realities that feel age appropriate.” In live-action shows like Stranger Things, young actors’ real-life physiological development probably hampers production in ways that Big Mouth will never have to deal with.

“I don’t think in Season 5, they’ll be juniors in college,” Mantzoukas said.

Instead, Big Mouth can take its time growing up with these kids in that the show won’t progress in real-time.

“The beauty is that there seems to be no end to the amount of stories in adolescence and puberty we can tell,” Kroll said. “We’re patiently trying to make our way through them. One he looks forward to exploring is an “acne story” as the kids reach that stage of development. As much as we might hate to see it, our beloved, foul-mouthed kids will be growing up so quickly.

None of this should come as a surprise, though. After all, the mantra of the opening credits is “I’m…GO-ING through chaaaaaanges!” Does that mean Nick might finally hit his growth spurt after Season 3? For his sake, we sure hope so.

Big Mouth Season 3 will be released on Netflix October 4, and it’s already been renewed through Season 6.