Big Mouth Has Been Officially Canceled By Netflix
Netflix's raunchy animated series Big Mouth will end after eight seasons.
Netflix is going through changes. According to Slash Film, the streamer is adding animated gross-out comedy Big Mouth to the list of shows it’s canceled. The adult cartoon starring Nick Kroll and John Mulaney joins an ever-growing club that includes fellow animated series F is For Family and Inside Job as well as live-action fare such as Umbrella Academy.
Fans of the show won’t have to say goodbye to Big Mouth just yet, however. They’ll still have the upcoming seventh season as well as the eighth and final season to say goodbye to the raunchy, fluid-filled sitcom. The series’ eighth and final season coincidentally will put it ahead of Grace and Frankie, and Orange is the New Black as the longest-running Netflix original.
Big Mouth centers around a group of kids all hitting puberty and dealing with the weird urges, gross body changes, and foul odors that come with the real-life David Cronenberg nightmare that is adolescence. The series was created by History of the World: Part II star Nick Kroll and longtime friend Andrew Goldberg and is based in part on the duo’s upbringing in Westchester County, New York, home of the fictional X-Men and real-life suburb of NYC.
Big Mouth‘s unique–if not disturbing–gimmick when it comes to portraying the horrors of puberty is using physical personifications of difficult emotions like the Hormone Monsters and Shane Lizard-er-Shame Wizard to express what the children are going through. These abstract concepts brought to life were so popular Netflix eventually gave them their own show, the also-canceled Human Resources.
Big Mouth, like other adult-oriented animated series such as South Park and Family Guy, has had its share of controversies. Some complaints have stemmed from the ages of the children compared to the situations they find themselves in sexually. Another notable problem viewers had with the show was the way it inaccurately depicted pansexuality through the character of Ali, played by Ali Wong. Then there’s the whole Jenny Slate playing a POC kerfuffle, but the less said about that, the better.
Despite its controversial nature Big Mouth has remained popular with many critics and has been nominated for several Emmys. The series won twice, both times for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance for Maya Rudolph‘s portrayal of the female Hormone Monster Connie.
While it may seem like the Big Mouth universe is ending thanks to the cancellation of Big Mouth and Human Resources, there is good news for fans of both series. Netflix has renewed its contract with Brutus Pink, the animation company behind both series, until 2026. That means there’s potential for another Big Mouth spinoff somewhere down the road.
It seems Netflix has been particularly cancel-happy as of late. The streamer’s latest victim was its physical DVD delivery service, a feature Netflix has offered longer than streaming content has been a thing. If even popular shows like Big Mouth can get the axe, it looks like anything on Netflix is fair game.
Thankfully there’s still great content like Heartstopper that Netflix is allowing to grow and flourish with not only a soon-to-release second season but an already contracted season 3 as well. It looks like the streamer isn’t in a hurry to cancel everything with promise.
