Dark Side of the Ring Co-Creator Evan Husney on Increased Ambitions for Season 3, Major Set-Pieces for ‘Plane Ride From Hell’ and ‘Onita’s FMW’

VICE TV’s blockbuster wrestling docuseries, Dark Side of the Ring, recently debuted the second half of its epic-sized third season with the much talked about “Plane Ride From Hell” episode. Season 3B continues this week with “The Double Life of Chris Kanyon,” which airs September 23 on VICE TV. Ahead of the “Plane Ride From Hell” premiere, executive producer and co-creator Evan Husney spoke to 411’s Jeffrey Harris for an exclusive interview, offering an update on a possible Season 4, along with how the show might deliver some additional content from past seasons to viewers. Below are some highlights:

On what the production team wanted to accomplish for Season 3: “With this season, coming off of Season 2, which we approached sort of as, ‘If we never get another season of Dark Side of the Ring, let’s go for the biggest stories that we want to tell; the ones that we can’t live without not doing.’ Mainly, the Chris Benoit story, the Owen Hart story, you know, things like that, and not really anticipating getting a third. And then when there were conversations about doing a whole third season, it was like, ‘Alright. Well, now this will give us the chance to kind of dig a little deeper and do some of the more obscure subjects while also telling some of the bigger ones that we had previously. So, it was an opportunity for us to get a lot of personal favorite stories in there like FMW, which is coming up this season. And then it also opened doors for us to be able to tell stories like the Grizzly Smith story. I don’t think we would’ve been able to do that without the accolades from the previous seasons. So yeah, we just wanted to continue the previous tradition of the show, kind of just explore more territory. And without the pandemic, I think we would’ve been able to travel outside the US to do more stories in England, stories in Japan, which we did do a few of, but we probably would’ve done more had we actually been able to travel more.”

Husney on the ambitions of creating a 14-episode Season 3: “Before Season 3, there were 16 episodes of Dark Side of the Ring, and Season 3 added 14 more. So, it’s basically like doubling the amount of Dark Side episodes there were previously in a very short amount of time; like half the amount of time. So for us, it was amidst the global crisis really trying to create 14 more hourlong documentaries in just over a year, and also the scope of the stories, having crews in Japan and shooting re-enactment set-pieces, some of which are in this upcoming half of the season that I think are our most ambitious set-pieces. I mean, you see a SWAT team blowing up a biker gang hideout in the Johnny K-9; something I thought we never would’ve figured out how to shoot in previous seasons.”

On re-creating FMW’s explosive effects for re-enactments and major setpieces: “Of course, with all the exploding ring set-pieces in the FMW episode, we literally tried to recreate some of those special effects for the re-enactments, bringing in special effects teams and having explosive charges around the ring that we used to shoot the show. So, we really tried to amp up the visual presentation of the show as well. Even in the Plane Ride From Hell episode, we brought in half a plane to shoot all the re-enactments in. I think it was all-around just a much more ambitious approach to the show.”

New episodes of Dark Side of the Ring Season 3B are currently airing on Thursday on VICE TV. Here’s the synopsis for the latest episode on the late former WCW and WWE Superstar Chris Kanyon and a trailer for Season 3’s latter half:

“In a culture that celebrates machismo and negative gay stereotypes, wrestling innovator Chris Kanyon kept his own sexuality a closely guarded secret for decades.”