The Band Is Back Together! ‘Phineas and Ferb’ Creators on the Long-Awaited Season 5 (Exclusive)
Hey, where’s Perry?
Oh, there you are, Perry!
After making it through a school year that felt like 10, step brothers Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher are going to do it all during another 104 days of summer vacation.
Animated favorite Phineas and Ferb, which ran for four seasons from 2007-15 and had a made-for-streaming movie in 2020, is finally back for a fifth season of adventures in the Danville tri-state area.
This summer, Phineas and Ferb (voices of Vincent Martella and David Errigo Jr.) voyage to the depths in a submarine sandwich submarine, Candace (Ashley Tisdale) takes her driver’s license test, and Perry the Platypus (growl of Dee Bradley Baker) goes to the vet.
Disney was impressed with the show’s streaming performance over the past few years and asked creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh if they’d be up for making new episodes.
“Just the response when we announced we were making more was sort of breathtaking,” Povenmire says, recalling all the love they received on social media. “Some people were crying, people were cheering, people were jumping up and down.”
Povenmire says that the new batch of episodes are going to include some instant classics. “There’s a bunch of episodes that I think are going to be people’s favorite episodes of all time,” he says. “Sort of like the ‘Squirrels in My Pants’ episode or the ‘Rollercoaster’ or ‘Flop Starz.’ There’s a bunch that are just sort of iconic episodes for kids from the original series, and I think that this is full of those kind of moments. So I’m very happy with it.”
“Squirrels in My Pants” was an unexpected viral craze and put Danville on the pop-culture map. “It’s like there’s so many weird moments from this song that we thought, ‘There’s no way this song will have a life outside of this show. It’s just too weirdly specific,'” Povenmire says. “No, we were wrong.”
“It’s funny to see what things the writers hook onto,” Marsh says. “The thing that you think is really going to catch on often is not the thing, and other weird stuff. All of a sudden you get scripts with these odd elements and you’re like, ‘Really? That’s the thing that you’re bringing back and calling? OK, cool.”
For the tweens who watched Phineas and Ferb back in the day, the show has definitely left its mark on them as adults. “When I first started seeing tattoos coming up, I’m like, ‘Dang, that’s a commitment!’ And I’ve seen some really wacky ones,” Marsh says. “A guy that I know who’s a tattoo artist in Glasgow has a tiki Ferb on his foot.”
Phineas and Ferb Season 5 premieres Thursday, June 5, at 8/7c on Disney Channel with two episodes. Episodes will also stream on Disney+ beginning Friday, June 6.
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August 2021
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