Regular Show is coming back in 2026 with a spinoff series called Regular Show: The Lost Tapes, and it seems to be rewriting the classic cartoon’s canon. The original run of Regular Show went off the air way back in 2017, but now, nearly a full decade later, Mordecai and Rigby are back with a new show.
In 2024, Warner Bros. announced that Regular Show would be revived with The Lost Tapes. Right off the bat, Warner greenlit the revival for two seasons, with original creator J.G. Quintel returning as the showrunner. Regular Show: The Lost Tapes is scheduled to premiere on Cartoon Network on May 11, 2026, and it might radically change the show’s canon.
Regular Show: The Lost Tapes Likely Takes Place Before Season 8
Regular Show went to space in its eighth and final season, and the show itself was retitled to Regular Show in Space, so it left behind the established formula and status quo. After that, Pops died and everything changed, so there’s no way that The Lost Tapes is carrying on from that point. Instead, I suspect the reboot is a prequel/in-betweequel set in their “peak years.”
In order to get Mordecai and Rigby back to their familiar status quo, The Lost Tapes will have to go back to Earth, back to the park, and that’ll mean rewriting the canon. This is similar to how the Cowboy Bebop movie was set just before the series finale — it can be a tough thing to figure out how to continue a story that already had a perfect ending.
But Regular Show is self-aware enough to make it work. It won’t try to pull the wool over its audience’s eyes; it’ll probably be very open and frank about resurrecting a finished series for an unnecessary spinoff. That might be wishful thinking in today’s Hollywood, but having Quintel back as the showrunner is a very promising sign.
Every Episode Of The Lost Tapes Will Be A Regular Show Retcon By Default
If The Lost Tapes is, indeed, a prequel series wedged in between existing seasons of the original show, then every single episode will be a retcon by default. If every episode takes place before the spacebound season, then it’ll retroactively change the context around that storyline.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Something as surreal and absurdist and out there as Regular Show doesn’t have to be as beholden to its established canon as Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The writers can have fun with it; Regular Show doesn’t have to make perfect sense as long as it’s funny.
Regular Show Is Too Smart Of A Show Not To Be Self-Aware
It might seem dubious for a beloved cartoon to come back with a new title and start retconning its own history. But Regular Show has always been smart and subversive and self-aware about this kind of thing. It won’t just swoop in and retcon the past and hope that nobody notices; it’ll almost certainly draw attention to the retcons, and to the revival as a whole.
The title The Lost Tapes seems to suggest that these new episodes will be presented as missing episodes from the original run. There might even be an anthological framing device where Mordecai and Rigby explain the context of each episode, and how it fits into the existing canon (or rewrites it). The possibilities are endless for Regular Show to have some meta fun with its revival.
The writers of Regular Show poked fun at the streaming industry for destroying traditional television in their final season. They’ve always subverted pop culture tropes, so they’ll most likely acknowledge how this is yet another spinoff from a big franchise, milking the cash cow. They’ll definitely wink at the audience with some sly, self-effacing humor — that’s the Regular Show way.