{"id":502295,"date":"2026-02-27T04:21:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T04:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/502295\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T04:21:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T04:21:16","slug":"smiling-friends-to-end-after-three-seasons-due-to-burnout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/502295\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Smiling Friends\u2019 to End After Three Seasons Due to Burnout"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/3ebde097040f7eff5bea10347d80952a8f-smilingfriends.rsquare.w330.png\" class=\"lede-image\" data-content-img=\"\" width=\"330\" height=\"330\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/> <\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"www.vulture.com\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmm3zxojm000i0iio934t9mya@published\" data-word-count=\"138\">Put on a frowny face. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vulture.com\/2022\/02\/smiling-friends-adult-swim-hbo-max.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Smiling Friends<\/a> creators and stars Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel are ending their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vulture.com\/article\/anime-streaming-growth-international-viewership-piracy-2025.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Adult Swim<\/a> series after three seasons despite its being picked up for two more. \u201cThis is not a bit,\u201d Hadel began an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DVNI_xlDJ6L\/?hl=en\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Instagram<\/a> video posted on February 26. \u201cThis is not a joke. Michael and I are here to announce that\u00a0Smiling Friends\u00a0will be ending after season three is done.\u201d Cusack admitted the decision was a long time coming, adding, \u201cTo be perfectly honest, after we finished season three, Zach and I just both had the same feeling where we felt pretty burnt out after putting years and years into this but also pretty accomplished. We just came to this feeling where we\u2019re like, \u2018I think that could just be it after season three.\u2019 We both felt like it was right.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"www.vulture.com\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmm41aa5p002h3b7cxnnxtjrk@published\" data-word-count=\"124\">Adult Swim supported their decision to take a much-needed break. \u201cWhen we told them exactly this, they said, \u2018If you\u2019re not feeling like making a cartoon, we\u2019re not going to stop you. Go have a break. Either come back or don\u2019t,\u201d Cusack said. \u201cThat\u2019s the other thing, we could come back in the future and make more episodes if we want, if we feel like it. And they\u2019ve been supercool and said they would let us do that. But maybe not. Who knows?\u201d You\u2019ll have a little over a month to prepare for the ending of Smiling Friends. The final two episodes will air on April 12, and they\u2019re not necessarily series finales, rather \u201clittle stragglers\u201d that didn\u2019t make it into season three initially.<\/p>\n<p>  Related<\/p>\n<p>    <script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Put on a frowny face. Smiling Friends creators and stars Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel are ending their&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[94426,789,49,48,113156,75,44,94429,348],"class_list":{"0":"post-502295","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-adult-swim","9":"tag-animation","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-ending","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-smiling-friends","16":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}