Mythic Quest Season 2 premiere recap: Poppy is a total boss

Poppy outwits Ian and David to get what she wants in the Mythic Quest Season 2 premiere.

With Ian back at the office in Mythic Quest Season 2, Episode 2, “Grouchy Goat,” Poppy starts taking cues from him when trying to inspire their art team for ideas about the new expansion.

As a side note, I love how Mythic Quest tackled the ongoing debate about company crunch culture in big video game companies. Poor Phil, the spokesperson for the art team, repeatedly tells Poppy and Ian that they need specific notes, so they don’t have to keep pulling overnights to get all the work done. Ian is firmly in the “it’s always better to have more than less” and “we’ll just scrap whatever we don’t need” camp rather than actively listening to Phil and helping the art team.

They get zero appreciation and rarely get to go home and see their families. I hope the show actually explores this a little more this season because it seems like a great opportunity to confront a timely topic head-on.

Back to the “inspiration” thing, Ian clearly knows how to get people motivated while Poppy struggles to do so, a problem since she’s scheduled to give an empowering speech at a Women in Gaming conference. Poppy ends up asking Ian to write the entire speech for her, and when she gets there, all dressed up and looking totally different from herself, she appears to blow her speech altogether. While she does try to follow the teleprompter, it’s too far away, and Poppy ends up rambling, crying and farting her way through an epic meltdown.

Or so it would appear!

But then she gets a standing ovation, and Ian reveals to David that the entire thing was scripted. He wrote the whole thing exactly as Poppy performed it, right down to the farting. He specifically ordered crab toasts to be passed around at the event knowing Poppy couldn’t resist despite her allergy.

And just when it looks like Ian has yet again orchestrated an incredible feat, David mentions that now he’ll have to hire a new programming team that listens specifically to Poppy. Ian is stunned. It turns out, Poppy called Ian and said she needed help with her speech, while to David, she said she would only do it if he agreed to give her a programming team should she be successful. Ian and David realize they’ve been “inspired,” Ian is sufficiently impressed.

David points out they were actually emotionally manipulated, but as Ian says, “what’s the difference?”

New episodes of Mythic Quest Season 2 premiere Fridays exclusively on Apple TV+.