iCarly fans are not exactly in luck. The content platform Paramount, which decided to rescue Nickelodeon’s children’s hit, has canceled the revival after three seasons. “The series had a great run of three seasons and delivered what fans really wanted to see with Carly and Freddie ending up together,” reported the spokesperson for the streaming service.
These statements lead one to think that iCarly said goodbye on its own terms and with an outcome that the viewer could interpret as the final one: nothing could be further from the truth. What viewers found at the end of the third season was a cliffhanger with all the letters: the insinuation that, finally, the identity of Carly’s mother, the character played by Miranda Cosgrove, would be known.
In the original series, which aired between 2007 and 2012 and ran for three seasons, the character of Carly’s mother never appeared on screen. She was barely talked about. And, in the return released in 2021, one of the enigmas was solved: the mother had abandoned her children when they were little but she made an appearance at the wedding between Carly and Freddie with which the season concluded.
Of course, the character’s face was never shown and iCarly said goodbye with Cosgrove pronouncing “Mom?” Viewers had a clear incentive to return for the fourth season that will never be produced.
With this abrupt cancellation that leaves fans dissatisfied, another television classic is buried after the terrible results of the reboots, sequels and revivals of youth classics. They tried to update the plots and attract the old public with the promise of resuming the lives of their beloved characters but the public, instead of being attentive as at the time of broadcast, had turned the page.
In the case of Saved by the Bell, which included the participation and cameos of members of the original cast such as Elizabeth Berkley, Mario Lopez, Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Tiffani Thiessen, it had to settle for two seasons as it did not gather enough audience on Peacock, the platform that tried to relaunch it. And, on this same platform, Punky Brewster, the sequel produced in 2021, only had one season: the long-time followers of Soleil Moon Frye as Punky failed to follow her adventures as a single mother.
More complicated was the case of Lizzie McGuire. The revival was announced by Disney but in the end not a single episode was filmed because Mickey Mouse’s offices were not convinced with the creative direction of the series. Hilary Duff wanted more adult plots in line with the age of the character and the usual fans, and Disney felt uncomfortable with the idea of ??mentioning sex in a title that had previously been juvenile.
So the project in the development phase was simply canceled and Duff was diverted to another project: the reboot of How I Met Your Mother titled How I Met Your Father, which had two seasons on Hulu, another platform owned by Disney.
