‘Jersey Shore Family Vacation’ Renewed for Season 4 — With No Snooki

Jersey Shore Family Vacation has officially been renewed for a fourth season, but it will be returning to MTV without one familiar face. Just a week following the Season 3 finale, MTV confirmed Thursday that the fan-favorite reality series would be headed back to TV, despite Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi no longer being involved.

News of the renewal was confirmed by Deadline, who reported that the renewal came on the heels of a successful third outing. Season 3 of Jersey Shore Family Vacation ranked as the No. 1 cable series across all key demos in its time period and the series was up nine percent in ratings over Season 2, making it MTV’s second highest-rated series for the 18-34 age group. Ranking just ahead of it is The Challenge: Total Madness. According to the outlet, the Season 3 finale, which aired on June 18, garnered a 1.1 rating in the 18-34 demo, making it the highest in almost two years. The episode generated an audience of 1.7 million.

Despite those record-high numbers, Season 4 is facing an uphill battle. In December of 2019, Polizzi, a fan-favorite on Family Vacation and its mothership series Jersey Shore, announced that she would not return for a fourth season if the series were renewed. Polizzi made the announcement during an episode of her podcast, It’s Happening With Snooki and Joey, stating that it was “definitely a hard decision,” but she had “to do what’s best for me at the moment.”

“I am not coming back to Jersey Shore for Season 4 if there is one. And there’s a lot of reasons why, but the main reason is… I just can’t do it anymore,” she explained. “Literally, leaving my kids to film it is really hard on me. I try and quit every single day. I just hate being away from the kids. I don’t like partying three days in a row. It’s just not my life anymore. I want to be home with the kids. It’s just really hard for me to leave the kids and film the show.”

Polizzi, who is mom to sons Lorenzo, 7, and Angelo, 6 months, as well as daughter, Giovanna, 5, later stated that she was unhappy “with the direction” the series was going as well as “all the drama.” Polizzi said that she was “getting death threats and getting death threats to my children.” She said that if she was “doing a reality show, I want it to be fun and I want it to be light-hearted and lately it’s not that.”