We all grow up with shows we love. We watch them with our friends, family or just by ourselves and they hold a special place for us. Many of us have grown up watching cartoons, and you’ve probably noticed that some of our favorite characters have come back to the spotlight with recent revivals of their TV shows. This year’s airwaves have been dominated by revivals of beloved shows such as Phineas and Ferb, The Amazing World of Gumball and Mike Judge’s King of the Hill. While it is great to see these shows comeback it begs the question are these show revivals necessary?

While I, and many fans and critics, love seeing the main character of King of the Hill, Hank, commentating on current events this show has achieved a rare high level of quality in this modern landscape of show revivals. Most show revivals are met with very controversial receptions with many having mixed reviews like Paramount’s revival of Beavis and Butthead and HBO’s revival of Clone High. When you take these beloved shows and you show it to fans overflowing with nostalgia and you give them these subpar revivals suddenly the rose tinted glasses come off and one of the most beloved shows from their adolescence is ruined forever.

These TV shows are also not cheap to produce. It can cost upwards of one million dollars to produce a single episode of a cartoon and they take up a lot of companies resources. Studios can receive up to five hundred show pitches a year and If all these resources are put towards the newest season of a once long dormant show you don’t have any resources left to produce a new show. You have a chance to produce a new piece of art that many people would have loved but you just can’t do that with all these expensive show revivals in production.

So are these show revivals necessary? The answer is no. So why do these companies keep producing them? Sadly the answer is money.  We still have a lot of revivals coming our way, like the American Dad revival coming in 2026, and as long as top executives at entertainment companies keep getting their pockets filled with money we will continue to see our favorite shows come back for the sake of a cheap buck.