Canceled Max Show Finally Returning to TV

By Daniel S. Levine

Summer Camp Island will return to television for its sixth season this summer, a year after fans had hoped. New episodes were supposed to be published on HBO Max in June 2022 but were delayed just days before their scheduled launch. Now, these episodes will finally air on Cartoon Network later this summer.

Last week, Cartoon Network confirmed that Summer Camp Island will air Wednesdays at 12 p.m. ET starting June 5. After the network runs through every episode of the first two seasons, Season 6 will debut. Cartoon Network has not set a specific premiere date though, only promising the season is "scheduled to debut later this summer."

Summer Camp Island was created by Julia Pott and tells the story of two childhood friends, the elephant Oscar Peltzer and the hedgehog named Hedgehog. After they are dropped off at a summer camp, they soon learn things are not as they seem. The camp counselors are witches, horses turn into unicorns, and there are talking sharks. The critically acclaimed series has earned several major award nominations, including two for Outstanding Children's Programming at the GLAAD Media Awards.

Season 1 was broken into two 20-episode parts, with the first airing in July 2018 and the latter half in June and July 2019 on Cartoon Network. The show shifted to HBO Max for its second season. Season 6 was scheduled to debut on Max (when it was still known as HBO Max) on June 9, 2022. However, on June 6, the streamer mysteriously delayed the show for no announced reason. Pott tried to assure fans that the show would eventually return, despite all the changes happening at Warner Bros. Discovery.

Alarm bells went off two weeks later when Summer Camp Island was included on a list of shows being removed from HBO Max. Pott fired off a fiery tweet, which she later deleted. She also retweeted animator Ryan Pequin, who worked on the show, and wondered if this meant Season 6 would never be released.

Cartoon Network, which is a corporate sibling of HBO Max, came to the rescue hours later. The network told The AV Club that both Summer Camp Island and Victor & Valentino, another show briefly in limbo, would "continue to air on Cartoon Network." No dates were confirmed at the time, but "fans can look forward to the remaining new episodes of both shows on CN this year." Of course, 2022 ended without any new Summer Camp Island episodes being released. Thankfully, it looks like 2023 will end with more adventures featuring Oscar and Hedgehog. 

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