The Floor Is Lava is one of the surprise hits of the summer for Netflix, as viewers have loved watching contestants jump across furniture to win a $29 lava lamp or burn up trying. With just 10 episodes the show is a quick watch, and now that people have cruised through the episodes we’re learning more about what was left out of the show’s first season.
In an interview with the AV Club, host Rutledge Wood added some fun details to the show’s first season, including that the lava the show is designed around is one of the slipperiest things he’s ever seen. We already knew that the show was filmed in a giant abandoned Ikea in Burbank, which was a huge benefit when it came to planning out the filming of the show. One thing that show creators also hinted at was a larger narrative to the show that saw the cutting room floor, and Wood explained that the initial idea was that it was his house contestants were navigating through.
There’s definitely parts of the show that didn’t make it to air. Like, it was supposed to seem like my crazy haunted mansion. And then, the further we got in there, we were like, “Why?” Like, we were already making the joke that, “Oh, you get to meet me, Rutledge Wood!” Half the people have no idea who I am, which is the hilarious part.
A larger story with the house was something show co-creator Irad Eyal mentioned in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter earlier in the month.
“If viewers watch carefully, and maybe it’s going to take a second viewing, there is a little bit of a backstory, a little bit of a mystery to the show too. Where is this house? What is this mansion that has all these different rooms? Why is the lava here?” asked. “And we’re going to want to explore that in more depth too just to give people a little bit more of the mystery behind the show too.”
Another fun bit that got cut was more details and reaction from failed contestants, who in the show’s final product simply disappeared without a trace.
At one point, I think we had like a “magic elevator,” and that’s where the losers would go, but they wouldn’t know where they were going. There was some silly stuff that we shot where we tried to, but just didn’t work.
Wood didn’t have any inside info on a second season, but he seemed just as hopeful as the show’s creators. There’s clearly something larger they want to get to with the show, and it would be great to see them get there while covering new contestants in large amounts of slippery lava.
[via The AV Club]