{"id":318110,"date":"2026-02-26T10:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T10:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/318110\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T10:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T10:14:12","slug":"smiling-friends-creators-announce-show-is-ending-with-season-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/318110\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Smiling Friends’ Creators Announce Show Is Ending With Season 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAdult Swim<\/a>\u2018s adult animated comedy Smiling Friends<\/a> is coming to an end. Series creators\u00a0Michael Cusack<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Zach Hadel<\/a> made the announcement in an audio message on the programming block\u2019s X account.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlong with the bad news, there was some good one. While the eight-episode Season 3 of Smiling Friends ended its Adult Swim run on Nov. 30, fans have not seen the last of the show. Cusack and Hadel unveiled that two extra episodes will be released on April 12, clarifying that they are \u201clittle stragglers, little rogue planets out there, not thematically related\u201d and not conceived as a series finale, leaving the door open to revisit the series in the future with new episodes.<\/p>\n

\n\tCusack and Hadel emphasized that \u201cthis was our decision\u201d to end Smiling Friends and that Adult Swim executives were supportive of it.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe duo explained their reasons. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAfter we finished Season 3, Zach and I both had the same feeling where we feel pretty burnt out after putting years and years into this, but also pretty accomplished, like we just just came to this feeling we\u2019re all like, I think that could just be it after Season 3,\u201d Cusack said. <\/p>\n

\n\tAdded Hadel, \u201cFrom 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% into it, and then go out what feels like on top, what feels like leave them wanting more, rather than people going, Oh, that show is still in the air. After several years of really, really grinding on this show, non-stop, without any breaks. 24\/7, we got to a point where we just felt like that\u2019s a good spot to end it. We wouldn\u2019t want to be doing more seasons with half- hearted or burnt out or not feeling it. That\u2019s not fair to us. It\u2019s not fair to the audience to give you guys f*cking slop.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCusack and Hadel thanked fans for embracing the show in such a big way.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s been a ride of a lifetime, Cusack said. \u201cThe show got way bigger than either of us ever imagined: all the fan art, all the costumes, people sharing memes, all of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThey urged other shows to hire the Smiling Friends crew.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Cusack and Hadel noted in their message to fans, the two will continue to work together. Deadline revealed exclusively in October<\/a> that the duo and producer Aron Fromm had teamed to launch Zam Studios, a new Los Angeles-based independent animation studio.<\/p>\n

\n\tSmiling Friends is available to stream the following day on HBO Max. Season 3 finds Pim, Charlie, Flint and the whole gang going absolutely bonkers once again, diving headfirst into their ultimate quest to spread joy upon the land. The series is produced by Williams Street, Adult Swim\u2019s in-house production company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adult Swim\u2018s adult animated comedy Smiling Friends is coming to an end. Series creators\u00a0Michael Cusack\u00a0and\u00a0Zach Hadel made the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[41775,93,61,60,41777,41778,282,41779],"class_list":{"0":"post-318110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-adult-swim","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-michael-cusack","13":"tag-smiling-friends","14":"tag-tv","15":"tag-zach-hadel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}