Mystery Science Theater 3000 Creator Joel Hodgson Confirms Show’s End At Netflix

This is a piece of news Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans are all too familiar with: the show has come to an end again.
The program, celebrating its 31st anniversary on Thursday with a traditional Turkey Day Marathon, has ended its run on Netflix. Creator Joel Hodgson confirmed the sad news in a letter to fans who participated in the 2015 Kickstarter to bring the show back after it ended its original run in 1999. “As some of you might have guessed, we won’t be making new seasons of the show for Netflix,” he wrote. “However, I want you to know that we’ve had a wonderful time working with the Netflix team, and will always be grateful to them. After all, they gave us the opportunity to spend the past few years aboard the Satellite of Love, and made it possible for new generations to discover the joys of riffing cheesy movies with your friends.”
He continued, “I couldn’t be more grateful or proud to our incredible cast and our wonderful crew for bringing this incarnation of the show to life, and hope that we’ll get the chance to continue collaborating on MST3K as we enter our next chapter … So, while this might be the end of the first chapter of bringing back MST3K, don’t worry: it’s not the last chapter.”
For the time being, the Kickstarter-backed 11th Season — aka The Return — and Season 12 (The Gauntlet) will continue to stream on Netflix with a rotating selection of episodes from the classic series. And even though Season 12 ended on a note of finality, hope always springs eternal for the show.
In fact, the program has managed to find a way back since the very beginning. Shortly before Hodgson and his team jumped from Minneapolis’s TV23 to the Comedy Channel, the entire station was up for sale and its programing subject to the axe. After seven years on the Comedy Channel — which changed its name to Comedy Central by MST3K’s second year on cable — the show was homeless for a brief time before Syfy (the called The Sci-Fi Channel) picked it up for an additional three years. At that point, Hodgson had long-since departed and his successors decided it was time to end the program. Fifteen-ish years later, the home video releases of the program became big sellers for Shout! Factory, and they worked with Hodgson to secure the program from its previous owner with the intent of making new episodes.
And that intent would suggest Hodgson and Shout! are looking into other channels and streamers willing to produce more MST3K. In the meantime, Hodgson has taken the show on the road as MST3K LIVE: The Great Cheesy Movie Circus Tour! He will continue touring into 2020.