Editor’s note: The original August 2021 version of this article was lost. The Lee Daily Register rebuilt it in October 2026 from the sources cited below, and added what happened afterward. The original version also said a Season 2 episode had won an award at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. We could not verify that claim, so it is not repeated here.
A new season of “Bee and PuppyCat” is on its way, and it is going to Netflix. The streaming service gave the go-ahead to “Bee & PuppyCat: Lazy in Space” in October 2020, with a launch planned for spring 2022, Kidscreen reported.
The episodes run about 30 minutes each. The total count had not been set when the deal was announced, said Michael Hirsh, chief executive of WOW! Unlimited Media, which owns the show’s studio, Frederator. Japanese studio OLM, known for its work on “Pokémon,” is handling the animation, and Frederator keeps ownership of the series.
Hirsh said the show was meant to reach a wider audience than the studio’s usual programming. “Netflix can expand animation beyond kids,” he told Kidscreen.
A web series built by its fans
“Bee and PuppyCat” was created by Natasha Allegri, an artist on “Adventure Time.” It follows Bee, a 22-year-old temp worker, and PuppyCat, her grumpy and mysterious companion, as they take odd jobs across a strange realm called Fishbowl Space. Its first season ran on Frederator’s Cartoon Hangover YouTube channel from 2013 to 2016, Looper noted.
Fans helped pay for it. The Kickstarter campaign for the full first season raised more than $872,000 and set a Kickstarter record, Tubefilter reported. More than 18,000 backers took part, making it the most-backed animation project in Kickstarter history, AWN reported in 2018.
Why the new season has taken so long
Netflix was not the first home announced for “Lazy in Space.” In June 2018, Frederator said the new season would launch in 2019 exclusively on VRV, inside the Cartoon Hangover Select channel, Animation World Network reported. That plan already called for half-hour episodes, longer than the original shorts, with OLM and its Los Angeles subsidiary, Sprite Animation, working on the production.
The VRV launch did not happen as planned, and the October 2020 Netflix deal replaced it. As of August 2021, the spring 2022 window reported by Kidscreen was the most recent public timing.
Who is in it
Allyn Rachel voices Bee. PuppyCat’s voice comes from Oliver, a text-to-speech program, Looper noted. When Frederator first announced the new season in 2018, it named Allegri as showrunner.
What happened next
The spring date slipped. On Aug. 9, 2022, Netflix added a page for the show with a new trailer and a premiere date of Sept. 6, 2022, Looper reported.
All 16 episodes arrived on Netflix that day. The first three retell the events of the original season, with some plot points rearranged and some jokes changed, and the remaining 13 carry the story forward, Tubefilter reported.
