'Smiling Friends' Season 4 gets fresh update from creator as viewers debate where the story will go

'Smiling Friends' recently aired its season 3 finale on Adult Swim, earning a largely positive response
A screengrab of Charlie Dompler and Pim Pimling in 'Smiling Friends' (Cover Image Source: Instagram | @adultswim)
A screengrab of Charlie Dompler and Pim Pimling in 'Smiling Friends' (Cover Image Source: Instagram | @adultswim)

'Smiling Friends' isn't your run-of-the-mill comedy show. Neither does it offer easy solutions, nor does it rely on the stock gag to make its audience laugh. Instead, what you get are compact episodes that run up to not more than 10-12 minutes and are replete with absurdist humour. 'Smiling Friends' narrates the tale of a small organisation and its employees. Their job is to bring about happiness to humankind. The third season of the Adult Swim show recently concluded with its finale on Sunday, November 30, and as per a Pop Rant report, it is now confirmed that the show has been renewed for its fourth and fifth seasons.

'Smiling Friends' co-creators Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel recently spoke with The Hollywood Reporter in a tell-all interview, reflecting on the past seasons and the upcoming installments. When asked about season 4, Cusack revealed that the writer's room had already broken ground and work on new episodes was underway. "We've written two scripts. We've got a third in the making. Super happy with it so far. It's always fun to jump back into getting fresh again with ideas," he added. 

In the aftermath of Cusack's declaration, fans of the show were quick to take to Reddit and discuss their speculations and theories. The subreddit 'r/SmilingFriends' has been buzzing with fan speculations about potential character arcs that might be explored in the upcoming season. One user wrote, "I just thought it'd be cool for the show to do a jab at Futurama for a bit of fun by having a subplot of an episode be a stupid crackpot theory or equation where you can simulate, like 'How our Brains Are Hypertuned to Sapient Critterkinds; Visualized Through Statistics'."

Another user visualized a conversation scene between Charlie and the Party Bro, quipping, "I hope it happens. Charlie backed down from the Yeti, but I feel like he wouldn't be as scared of this guy, and it'd be a heckin' epic battle." A third user speculated, "Can we just enforce Glep having been up to nefarious things during the times they didn't show? I'm talking real conniving, dastardly, wicked schemes and hijinks. Where was he in the 30s? Why did he trade weapons to both sides?"

The third season of 'Smiling Friends' concluded with the shocking revelation that Glep was one of the co-founders who built the company from the ground up. The eighth episode, titled 'Glep Ep', had the character recede into the background in an unconventional narrative trick that brought forth other background players to inform Glep's motivations. Despite the show being wildly popular, both Cusack and Hadel stand firm in their decision not to continue beyond the fifth season. Decider quoted them as saying, "Even if we had a thousand ideas at the end of season five, we’re not going to go on long. I will say that much. We're not going to put a number up, but five is getting close to probably where we’ll want to wrap it up." 

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