This is Why There Won’t Be a Fifth Season of Metalocalypse

Not since Jem and the Holograms has a band consisting solely of cartoon characters been as popular as Dethklok. I mean, they toured with Mastodon, and Mastodon opened. I’ve had a few years to get used to that idea and I still can’t believe it.

So it’s not shocking that people got so very excited last week when a confusing promo that seemed to suggest the impending arrival of a fifth season… or that people got so very bummed when the show’s co-creator and musical mastermind, Brendon Small, announced that this was not the case.

What IS shocking, though, is why  find out why that fifth season is as real as a Guns N’ Roses reunion. According to Small…

For those complaining about lack season 5. Was a network decision- I wanted to do it as a final big mini series. They said no. True story.

— Brendon Small (@_Brendonsmall) March 14, 2015

Whhhhhhooooaaaaa. I wonder what the heck happened there? I can’t imagine Adult Swim was unhappy with Metalocalypse‘s performance — according to Zap2it, the show’s fourth season, which aired in 2012, was a smash. Maybe they felt the show had become too expensive to produce (every season you re-up a show, you also have to give everyone a raise), or maybe the Adult Swim executives who had first championed the show have since left the network, and the new execs simply didn’t like the program (you’ve no doubt heard bands complain about getting screwed after the people that signed them to a label leave that label; the same thing happens in the film and television industry all the time).

Regardless of the reasons behind Adult Swim’s disappointing decision, Small has reiterated his “to service a final story & music- but not in way fans are used to.” What could that be? Some of sort of multimedia project? A new album with a web series tie in? Maybe a comic book? Joss Whedon has had some success transitioning a couple of discontinued shows into comic form so that the series can live on, and even though it would be a little sad to never heard Murderface’s lovable lisp again, it’s very easy to envision a Dethklok Dethkomik, isn’t it?

While you continue to speculate as to how Small plans to continue and conclude Metalocalypse, some fans have started a petition urging Adult Swim to put the show back on the air. As of this writing, the petition has a little more than 3,000 signatures, with a goal of getting 10,000 signatures. I don’t know if that would actually persuade Adult Swim to reconsider, but who knows? You might as well sign the damn thing. Couldn’t hurt.

[via Metal Injection]