With strong reviews and two high-profile leads in Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong, it probably seemed like a forgone conclusion that Netflix would renew the animated series Tuca and Bertie for a second season. But last July, the streaming giant surprisingly canceled the show, leading to dismay among its loyal fanbase as well as creator Lisa Hanawalt.
“Everyone is still glowing over the reviews and articles and feedback. Tuca and Bertie is critically acclaimed and has repeatedly been called one of the best new shows of the year,” Hanawalt wrote on Twitter last year. “Best of all, I still get daily messages and tweets from viewers who connect personally to the characters and stories. … And the show is still being discovered by new fans every day!! None of this makes a difference to an algorithm, but it’s important to me and the way I want to continue making art in this world.”
Now, 10 months later, Hanawalt will get to continue the ride: Adult Swim has picked up Tuca and Bertie for a second season, with Haddish, Wong, and costar Steven Yeun all set to return. The animated series will debut in 2021, with an option for additional seasons to follow thereafter.
“I’ve been a fan of Adult Swim shows since my teens, so I’m thrilled to bring my beloved fowl to the party and be a new voice for a fresh decade of absurd, irreverent, yet heartwarming adult animation,” Hanawalt said in a statement.
A production designer and producer of the hit Netflix animated series Bojack Horseman, Hanawalt focused her own series on an exploration of 30-something female friendships in all its complexities. The show was praised for its depiction of the trauma associated with sexual assault and its portrayal of addiction and recovery, among other weighty issues.
“I thought the sobriety stuff would be interesting because it’s not played for drama—like she doesn’t hit rock bottom, she doesn’t crash her car into a building, she doesn’t relapse, she doesn’t even seem tempted to relapse during this season,” Hanawalt said of Haddish’s Tuca in an interview with Vanity Fair last year.
“Her sobriety kind of mirrors what I’ve seen a lot in real life with my friends as we get into our thirties, is that it can sometimes be a quiet decision,” she continued. “And what’s difficult about it is not the temptation to drink or how you’ve ruined your life, but just the social-anxiety aspect . . . Just being in situations where you were used to having a drink or five, and they lubricated things a little bit or numbed things, and suddenly you’re just kind of exposed.”
It’s a rarity for a show to be canceled by Netflix and resuscitated elsewhere, but there is at least one example of precedent. Last year, after Netflix axed the critically acclaimed One Day at a Time, the show was saved by PopTV for another season.
On Friday, in the aftermath of the news, social media was awash in celebratory posts—proof, perhaps, that Netflix should have paid a little more attention to Vanity Fair critic Sonia Soraiya before the cancellation.
“Give Tuca and Bertie some time,” she wrote her a review last year. “I know, I know—who can wait three or four episodes for a show to find its wings, in this attention economy? But like its forbearer BoJack Horseman, Lisa Hanawalt’s trippy, technicolor urban menagerie takes a few hours to settle into high gear.”
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