The Muppet Show special won four Emmys, and Disney and Seth Rogen still can't agree on a series

Here we are, seven months on from that Muppet Show special airing on Disney+ and ABC, and you’d think after all the fuss — rave reviews, a shedload of Emmy wins, decent viewer numbers — we'd have a fresh batch of felt-driven chaos in the works. But, as is so often the way with anything involving multiple studios (and multiple egos), things appear to have ground to a halt just as quickly as Kermit’s latest musical number ramps up.

The Muppet Show special pulled in 7.58 million viewers across Disney+ and ABC in its first eight days.

Celebration, Hype, and... Stall

This whole attempt at a Muppet Show comeback was cooked up as a 'backdoor pilot' — that’s TV’s fancy way of saying ‘let’s test the waters before we spend real money’. The special was announced back in September 2025, not-so-coincidentally timed for the original series’ 60th birthday. Seth Rogen, as producer, brought in his mate Maya Rudolph for a cameo, and the main event had Sabrina Carpenter absolutely front-and-centre, singing her own hit (yes, "Manchild" ended up as a Muppet number) and a duet of "Islands in the Stream" with Kermit himself — somehow not as weird as it sounds, honestly.

The result? Well, pretty much anyone with a TV critic badge loved it. Rotten Tomatoes handed over a 98% positive rating from 45 reviews. Award shows lapped it up too: Four Primetime Creative Arts Emmys, including Outstanding Variety Special. Sabrina Carpenter, not content with just being the on-screen headliner, took home one of those Emmys as a co-executive producer, which means she’s now halfway to an EGOT. She’s already got two Grammys, so it’s not as if she needs the validation — but fair play.

Why No Next Steps?

Ordinarily you’d expect this kind of success to have studios tripping over each other to get contracts signed. Not so. According to Deadline, there aren’t even whispers of future episodes at the moment, let alone a greenlight. And the reason’s classic Hollywood foot-dragging: Point Grey Pictures (that’s Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s shop), Muppet Studios, and Disney themselves can’t agree on what a fresh Muppet Show series should actually be. Creative direction — the sort of phrase that usually means endless meetings with no actual meeting of minds. So for now, the revival is stuck in limbo, no matter how many Emmys it has in the trophy cabinet.

Muppets in the Disney Era

Quick history lesson: Disney’s been running the Muppets circus since 2004. They managed a short-lived revival with the 2011 film (appropriately titled The Muppets), but after the sequel, Muppets Most Wanted, flopped, and the 2015 attempt at a single-camera sitcom failed to stick, Kermit and co. suffered yet another hiatus. Disney have tried to keep things ticking over with specials like Muppets Haunted Mansion and Muppet Mayhem, but nothing’s properly reignited that spark that made the originals a primetime staple.

The general reaction to the current stalemate is, honestly, disappointment. The Muppet Show format — variety, chaos, celebrity guests — is built for big network TV. You can’t just bottle that and leave it on a shelf, especially when Disney+ could sorely use another flagship series, what with Marvel and Star Wars offerings thinning out for the foreseeable. For now, at least, it seems even a shiny pile of Emmys can’t get the three camps to agree on what’s next for the Muppets’ comeback.