Beloved animated series for adults to end after three seasons

Adult Swim’s animated comedy Smiling Friends will conclude with its third season, according to the show’s creators.

In a statement posted on Adult Swim’s social media, creators Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel said Smiling Friends “will be ending after Season 3 is done”.

Smiling Friends follows the employees of a small company tasked with improving the happiness of troubled clients. The sitcom premiered in January 2022 and quickly gained attention for its surreal humour, unconventional animation style, and offbeat storytelling.

The creators explained their reasons for ending the series, saying they felt both creatively accomplished and “burnt out” after years of developing the show.

“We just just came to this feeling we’re all like, I think that could just be it after season three,” Cusack said.

Hadel said they had always talked about ending the series while it still felt strong. “From the very, very beginning of the show, we always said, ‘Oh, man, how great would it be to try to make the show as good as it could be, put 110 per cent into it, and then go out what feels like on top, what feels like leave them wanting more,’” he said.

After “several years of really, really grinding on this show, non-stop, without any breaks”, he added, they reached “a good spot to end it”.

He made clear that they did not want to continue under creative strain. “We would not want to be doing more seasons with half-hearted or burnt out or not feeling it. That’s not fair to us. It’s not fair to the audience to give you guys f***ing slop.”

Fans still have something to look forward to. Season 3 concluded its main run on 30 November, but two additional episodes, produced alongside the third season but not previously aired, are set to be released on 12 April.

Hadel said they should not be considered as “finales” but rather “little stragglers, little rogue planets out there, not thematically related”.

The decision to end the show was theirs, Cusack and Hadel said, adding that the network supported their choice. “If you’re not feeling like making a cartoon, we’re not going to stop you. Go have a break. Either come back or don’t,” the creators said Adult Swim told them.

Speaking directly to fans, they acknowledged the news was “very disappointing” and that recording the message had been hard “because it’s just a very difficult thing to say for us”.

“We hope you understand and we hope you’ve enjoyed what we’ve done. It’s been amazing. The fans have been so good. It’s been the best. It’s been the ride of a lifetime,” they said.

“The show got way bigger than either of us ever imagined: all the fan art, all the costumes, people sharing memes, all of it.”

The pair encouraged other productions to hire members of the Smiling Friends crew and added that they would continue collaborating on future projects.

In October, a Deadline report stated that Cusack, Hadel, and producer Aron Fromm had launched Zam Studios, a Los Angeles-based independent animation studio.