Floor Is Lava is the perfect distraction from the horrors of reality, and it’s been a big splash on Netflix in recent weeks as people of all ages have watched teams try to traverse a themed obstacle course without tumbling into some weirdly glowing, gooey molten “lava.” The show has been a surprise hit on Netflix, and now we’re getting answers to a number of questions many have wondered online as word spread among the show’s fans.
In an interview with Jean Bentley of The Hollywood Reporter, show creators Irad Eyal and Megan McGrath revealed a number of secrets about the show’s production, though they were close to the vest about the actual material that makes up the “lava” that swallows contestants without a trace.
“The reason we’re being so secretive about it is because it really did take a long time to nail this down,” Eyal explained. “You want the lava to glow. “Oh, that’s easy,” the chemists said, “we could just add in some glowing chemicals.” Well, it turns out those things are carcinogenic. So you can’t have that in there. So it took a long time to figure out exactly how do you make this thing bubble, flow, be slippery, be viscous in the right way, and also be safe that people can be submerged in it for minutes at a time, hours at a time, whatever it is, and come out safely.”
Perhaps most surprisingly, the show was not filmed on a Hollywood soundstage. No one wanted to deal with the lava that took months for scientists to perfect, and it was much heavier than water. So the production found a former IKEA and transformed the entire thing into where the show’s props were made, the show was cast and where the actual rooms full of lava were set up for contestants to traverse.
McGrath: The studios here, we called everybody. We asked all of the main studios and nobody wanted 100,000 gallons of lava on their stuff, which is understandable. Even the places with giant pools that typically hold water, lava is heavier than water so they didn’t want that in their pools either. So we ended up lucking out and we found this Ikea and it was huge. We had all of our different teams in there. There was a welding shop and the casting department and challenge producers had a giant office that they were working in. It ended up working out really well. The main stage is in, I guess the self-serve area of Ikea?
Eyal: It’s that final checkout area with the massive shelves. It’s the biggest room in the entire Ikea. We took everything, cleared everything out of there. So we had all the space that we needed.
There are lots of little details in the interview that are great if you’ve cruised through all 10 episodes are are now in a lava drought, so to speak. And the show is actually re-watchable in a few ways, including that its creators implied a deeper story is at play with the set design. That was explicitly mentioned as something they want to explore in future episodes.
The two creators hinted a lot about a second season, in fact, though nothing is official. Considering Floor Is Lava has been No. 1 on Netflix in several countries and is getting plenty of buzz, it seems likely that we’ll have more lava in our lives soon. But one thing that seems certain: there will be new rooms to jump through in Season 2. That means a somber farewell to the beloved Africa desk, sadly. You were as magnificent as any surface surrounded by lava ever could be.
