The following contains spoilers for all of Disenchantment.
Matt Groening’s third TV show, the Netflix fantasy comedy Disenchantment, came to an end after five seasons (totaling 50 episodes) and five years on Friday, September 1, 2023. The series, starring Abbi Jacobson, Nat Faxon, Eric Andre, and many more, followed the adventures of Princess Tiabeanie (“Bean”), the elf Elfo, and the demon Luci, and concluded on a satisfying note, that stayed true to its more serialized and dramatic nature compared to Groening’s other shows. Thematically, it seemed very aware, even moreso than Futurama, that it would never be coming back.
True enough, it never became a huge hit like its sister shows, and I know a few people who were under the impression it had already been canceled. (Technically, they were right, even if the fifth season was produced.) Even someone like me, who enjoyed the show (with some qualifications, which we’ll get into later), couldn’t drum up much enthusiasm for its finale, as disinterest can be as infectious as excitement, and the sheer length of time between seasons made me forget how much fun I do have watching it.
Naturally, it can be really hard to escape the shadow of siblings as groundbreaking and iconic as The Simpsons and Futurama, but Netflix’s bingewatch model can’t have helped. Anecdotally speaking, daily reruns, and weekly new episodes of Groening’s Fox series were a huge reason so many of their best gags and punchlines became ingrained in our collective consciousness. Netflix rarely generates a desire to rewatch shows, only to watch something else new, meaning many, like myself, would finish each season of Disenchantment, and completely forget about it until a year later.
Something else was the lack of mechandise or books, which helped make The Simpsons and Futurama so ubiquitous. As a kid, I had soft toys and figurines, VHS compilations, and more importantly, copies of Bongo’s “Simpsons Comics,” including the compendium “Simpsons Comics Royale,” which featured several essays by Groening himself. As far as I can tell, Netflix doesn’t sell any Disenchantment merchandise, and Bongo mysteriously went out of business shortly before the show premiered in 2018. Groening’s plans to sell “Disenchantment” comics though a new imprint, Bapper Books, fell through, and they are now set to be released by Titan after the show’s conclusion.
So what you have is a show that Netflix basically gave Groening and showrunner Josh Weinstein a blank check to make exactly what they wanted, a shorter, less episodic series with lavish animation, and higher-profile voice actors, before effectively dumping it out once a year. It’s an easy sentiment to have during the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, where Netflix has come across first and foremost as thinking of filmmaking as a tax dodge, but you have to wonder if Groening — who was once incredibly vocal about how network executives treated Futurama — regrets selling the show to them. (While Netflix don’t seem interested in pulling their own media, the lack of physical copies must give everyone pause.)
Would any of this have mattered if Disenchantment had been extraordinarily good TV though? Lots of streaming shows face all or some of the same issues as it did, but people still talk about them – I saw far more love for A League of Their Own, which also starred Abbi Jacobson as a queer protagonist, during its sole season, than the entirety of Disenchantment‘s lifespan. The show is undeniably flawed: its serialized plot means every new character and scenario becomes one more storyline to keep a track of, culminating in a series finale with an epilogue longer than The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Futurama had an overarching story too, but never to the extent the Brain Spawn become the villains in every episode, the way Bean’s mother Dagmar does. It’s not like the show’s writers were unaware of this, hence the inclusion of the fourth wall-breaking guy who keeps getting a flaming arrow to the chest, who gives an especially frank admission in the fifth season premiere that people would struggle to remember anything going on after the months between seasons. Viewers who only tuned into the first season never got to see Bean, Elfo and Luci grow beyond being a Fantasy Leela, Fry and Bender, or Bean’s father and stepmother become more than Dreamland’s Donald and Melania Trump.
Continued belowBut those of us who remembered to check in every year were rewarded, getting to see Bean, Elfo, Luci, and almost every other character grow, change and mature, and nearly every plot development pay off satisfyingly. I was emotionally invested enough to genuinely gasp (unlike that faker Shocko) when Bean’s girlfriend, Mora the mermaid, was killed in the antepenultimate episode, and to shed a tear when Luci (who also dies) uses his one wish from God to resurrect her, proving he had become a truly selfless demon. (Come to think of it, Disenchantment probably has the most open exploration of religion on any of Groening’s shows, and its portrayal of God is far more interesting than Harry Shearer’s version on The Simpsons.)
Perhaps because of its lack of popularity, Disenchantment closes the book on its world in far more definitive fashion than any of Futurama‘s (so far) three series finales, or The Simpsons season 23’s “Holidays of Future Passed” would’ve if it had been its show’s finale. I admire the maturity with which it ends, with Bean and Elfo going their separate ways, and Luci not returning from Heaven, reflecting how people grow apart and may never speak again in real life, unlike how Futurama always ends in open-ended fashion, just in case there’s another revival. The pièce de résistance comes during the show’s post-credits scene, where Dreamland disappears after Elfo orders the castle’s drawbridge be closed, in an unexpectedly poignant reminder of the impermanence of all things that end.
R.I.P. Disenchantment – fingers crossed, your legend will only grow in the next ten years.
