Despite earlier reports that Smiling Friends had already been greenlit for a full five seasons, creators Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack abruptly announced that the series would be ending with Season 3 earlier this year. That means tonight’s episodes are both season and series finales for the beloved animated series.
If you’re hoping to tune in, here’s when you’ll be able to watch the final two episodes live or online.
How to Watch the Final Episodes of Smiling Friends
The final two episodes of Smiling Friends will air live on Adult Swim on Sunday, April 12, starting at 11pm ET. If you want to be a part of the live finale, you can catch the episodes online through live TV subscriptions like Hulu + Live TV, which happens to offer a three-day free trial.
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Otherwise, the episodes will be available to stream on HBO Max the next day, April 13. While HBO Max hasn’t confirmed an exact release time, their ‘next-day’ streaming releases typically drop at 3am ET.
The official Adult Swim schedule confirms both episode titles as well as individual broadcast times:
- 11pm ET: “Friend-Bot (Version 12589218731809213528796879521)”
- 11:15 pm ET: “Charlie’s Uncle Dies and Doesn’t Come Back”
The episodes make up the ninth and tenth episodes of the third season, with the series ending at 28 episodes total.
Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack pitched Smiling Friends all the way back in 2018, and have retained creative control over the series for its full three seasons. Both creators have clarified that the decision to end the series was entirely their own, though was ultimately a decision that Adult Swim supported.
The full announcement video is available on Adult Swim’s YouTube channel, with both creators highlighting their desire to not “overstay the show’s welcome” and instead end on a high note. With this context, I wouldn’t expect these last two episodes to serve as ‘finales’ in the traditional sense, as it’s possible these episodes were developed before the decision to end the series.
While we haven’t reviewed every season, we did get the chance to review some episodes from Season 2. Writing for IGN, Steven Nguyen Scaife praised Hadel and Cusack for getting “deep and weird with their animated experiments, bolstering hilarious writing with impressive craft and infectious creativity.”
Blythe (she/her) is an Audience Development Coordinator at IGN who, when she isn’t following streaming news, spends way too much time in character customization screens and tracking down collectibles.
