J.G. Quintel is bringing Regular Show back after nine years away, and he is doing it with the kind of off-kilter energy that made the original series a breakout. The Lost Tapes premieres May 11 with a half-hour special, opening a new run that will send the first 10 episodes to Cartoon Network and later make them available to stream on HBO Max in June.
The revival reunites original cast members William Salyers, Sam Marin, Mark Hamill, Minty Lewis and Janie Haddad Tompkins. Quintel, who created the series and voiced Mordecai, said looking back on the early days still leaves him wondering how the project made it to air: “When I think back on those days, I’m like, ‘How did they greenlight it?’” He added that “some of the stuff we were doing was so weird, but it was making us laugh,” and said executives eventually told the team, “We need you guys to tone it down.”
That looseness was part of the original pitch from the start. The Regular Show pilot, which debuted Sept. 6, 2010, followed Mordecai and Rigby as they swiped a magical synthesizer from a wizard while he was peeing in a bush, then named the instrument “The Power.” What began as a strange little animated setup turned into one of Cartoon Network’s most successful series, running for 244 episodes across eight seasons from 2010 to 2017 and earning six Emmy nominations along the way. It won in 2012 for outstanding short-format animated program.
Quintel’s path to that success ran through Camp Lazlo and then [The Marvelous Misadventures of] Flapjack, part of a stretch that helped define Cartoon Network’s golden age and pushed the TV-PG rating as far as it could go. Regular Show was the clearest expression of that approach, mixing absurd comedy with a premise that never tried to behave. The new project suggests that spirit is still intact, even if the series is returning in a different form.
What comes next is a sizable rollout. The first 10 episodes of The Lost Tapes are set to air on Cartoon Network, with 30 additional episodes scheduled for later release. For fans who grew up with Mordecai, Rigby and the rest of the park crew, the question is no longer whether the show can come back. It already has. The real test is whether Quintel can make the return feel as unhinged, and as funny, as the original run that made people ask how it was ever greenlit in the first place.
