>>94122264>a creative chokehold on the show until they realized it was going to kill its rating That's kind of exaggerated but the general idea you're getting at is true. Don't think it has anything to do with the ratings though.
Basically since it was Daron's first show there were a few other executives alongside her with more experience in TV. Hard to say what she or they or Disney did or didn't do, but I get every indication that early on it was just trying to be a purely episodic school/Earth-centered comedy-- whether Disney enforced that, the execs did, or whether Daron just went along with it, who knows.
Two storyboarders began doing actual creative things with the generic premises they were given (Mewberty started out as something totally different in outlines, but they changed it so much they received sole credit), the two executives left in the middle of the first season's production. Maybe they were only there to help Daron get into the rhythm of showrunning? Who knows.
Either way, from there on she had more freedom and it stopped being episodic above all else. Those two storyboarders continued to change things up (how we got Blood Moon Ball, Mewnipendence Day, and Storm the Castle) and the show got a little more serious and plotty.
Show got a lot of attention when the opening was shown at 2014 Comic Con and the sheer amount of fanart on social media that got noticed by Disney + it getting a high number of viewers when a preview was shown got it renewed for a second season before the official premiere. The fact that they deliberately ended the first season with a huge cliffhanger may have helped too.
From then on, Disney backed off more, Daron got more control, those storyboarders got higher positions (Bisignano/Hammersley) and have a huge role in the show being what it is now and it gradually got more and more into the plot and lore. Disney seems to have stepped off because Daron and co. are doing interesting things with it + it's been successful
