The surreal workplace animated comedy “Smiling Friends” will air its third season on Adult Swim, and the Internet’s popularity about it has reached an all-time high.
In case you’ve forgotten, the show’s production arm is part of Cartoon Network, which made the announcement during its 2024 Annecy panel (via Variety ), where Oh My God Yes!, A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances, and Ha Ha You Clown have also been confirmed to be getting full series greenlit.
Manage Cookie Settings
Smiley Friends was created for Adult Swim by Zach Hader (formerly Newgrounds and YouTube animator) and Michael Cusack (YOLO). Made up of episodes of approximately 11 minutes, the animated show revolves around the surreal adventures and strange misadventures of a small company and its employees, all of whom are dedicated to spreading happiness to those who want it. Of course, things can quickly go off the rails, and often do, with many episodes also exploring their lives after losing their jobs.
Although the series’ pilot aired in 2020 and the first season was released in 2022, the arrival of season 2 this year has led to a surge in popularity online, with many viewers going back to watch season 1 before jumping into episode 2. Because of this, the renewal for season 3 is not surprising, as Smiling Friends has quickly become one of the network’s most watched adult animated shows in some time.
Personally, I’m usually annoyed by these ridiculous animated shows aimed at adults, but Smiling Friends completely “cracked the code” for me in a way I haven’t seen since the early seasons of Rick and Morty (I abandoned ship halfway through season 3 and never came back). I can only describe it as an endless stream of trashy ideas filled with creativity and random ideas that either work or don’t, but move at such a fast pace that it’s hard to get annoyed by them. The voice acting (including the cameos) is all great, so that helps too.
