Smiling Friends is ending at Adult Swim

Hadel and Cusack (after emphasizing that their missive wasn’t intended as a joke) spoke at length in the video message, which they posted to Adult Swim’s YouTube account on Wednesday night, about the decision to end the series. Which, they clarified, came completely from them, not the network. (Indeed, Adult Swim has apparently told the duo that they’re welcome to bring the show back at a later date, although Hadel and Cusack were clear about not wanting to make any promises to do so.) While repeatedly apologizing to fans, the pair revealed they’re simply tired, citing a sense of both burnout and completion that they’d hit as they were wrapping up season three of the series. 

Ostensibly about a charitable company employed to spread good cheer around Pennsylvania, Smiling Friends was, in practice, mostly about whatever Hadel and Cusack found funny at any given moment, with episodes often embarking on bizarre tangents with strange, often-menacing one-off characters. The pair, who met after developing individual followings as animators online, served as both the voices of the vast majority of its cast and its primary writers, even as the show’s deliberately idiosyncratic animation style employed a large crew of animators. Although never a Rick And Morty-esque breakout hit, the show was a critical success, and can be seen to be something of a throwback to an earlier era of Adult Swim shows that made a virtue of their ability to take an idea wherever its creators’ minds desired. Originally debuting as part of one of Adult Swim’s famous April Fool’s Day events back in 2020, the show started its formal run in 2022, releasing new seasons in 2024 and 2025. The show’s final episodes will air on April 12, 2026.