The Gravity Falls subreddit has 1.4 million members and still posts fan art and theories a few times an hour — love for the two-season Disney Channel original has persisted for 14 years. On September 15, 2026, that appetite gets a physical object to chew on: The Art of Gravity Falls, assembled by series creator Alex Hirsch and Rob Renzetti, the show’s supervising producer and story editor.
The hardware, so to speak:
- Format: hardcover, 256 pages, 12 x 10 inches
- Price: US$55.00
- ISBN: 9781368117869, published by Hyperion Avenue
- Foreword: animator James Baxter
- Contents: over 2,000 pieces of artwork — concept art, character sketches, storyboards, color scripts — plus the complete series bible, pilot development notes, scrapped character concepts and episode-by-episode breakdowns
- Extras: a die-cut foldout case, a gatefold of Mabel’s sweaters, and more than fifty behind-the-scenes photographs from Hirsch’s personal collection
Commentary comes from art director Ian Worrel, animator Joe Pitt, creative director Mike Rianda, location designer Sean Jimenez and production designer Phil Rynda. Renzetti’s pitch is blunt: “this is the ultimate Gravity Falls book because it basically shows you exactly how the show was created.”
Speaking to Polygon days before publication, Hirsch was cheerfully unsentimental about why a decade-old cartoon is getting the deluxe treatment now. “There’s a mathematical zeitgeist thing happening,” he said — kids who were 12 at launch are 22 and chasing nostalgia; the 22-year-olds are 32 and showing it to their kids. “There’s money to be made in nostalgia, so 10 years later, Disney finally recognizes that people might wanna buy these products and is letting us make them.” He credits TikTok too: the platform’s reaction to The Book of Bill turned the show’s Summerween episode into something like an actual holiday and sent Disney Plus viewership climbing.
The most useful material in the book, judging by the interview, is the stuff that wasn’t planned. Bill Cipher — now the franchise’s marquee villain — started as an inside joke, “a little eye of Providence dressed like the Mr. Peanut, who’s kind of a jerk.” His promotion to Big Bad came only after the audience reaction to his season 1 debut in “Dreamscapers” proved overwhelming. Hirsch describes early fan feedback as a “heat map of passion”: seven episodes were already finished before the first one aired, and a live chat detonating over Gideon’s second journal told the team that continuity was worth the effort.
And the question everyone asks? Hirsch has been answering it for a decade. “I have no intention to ever create a season three of Gravity Falls,” he said, arguing that the satisfying ending is precisely why people are still talking. Then Renzetti cracked, “Wait a minute… now I’m changing my mind,” invented a talking race car named Rum McGee on the spot, and Hirsch signed off with the perfect non-denial: “So, I mean, Gravity Falls season 3, The Legend of Rum McGee, might be coming out, but it probably wouldn’t be me making it.”
