This text was initially printed on April 15, 2024. Bluey aired a shock season finale, titled “Shock,” on April 21, but it surely nonetheless stays unclear what’s subsequent for the sequence.
Three years in the past whereas reporting a bit in regards to the kids’s TV masterpiece Bluey, I requested creator Joe Brumm what he envisioned for the way forward for the sequence. The query was already foremost in his thoughts, he mentioned. He knew that as the youngsters who play Bluey and Bingo acquired older, the characters’ speech patterns and diction would change. “Do you re-voice the children?” he requested himself. “You’re not going to seek out the identical voice. It’s going to sound totally different. You’re not going to idiot anybody. Your different possibility is, do you age up the present with the children? Set it 5 years sooner or later, possibly Mum and Dad have an accident — twins?” Or possibly Bluey and Bingo’s cousins Muffin and Socks may grow to be extra central figures … however then, Brumm identified, “it’s like, Why are these bloody cousins round on a regular basis? Is there an excellent wilder answer on the market?”
Brumm was unsure what to do in 2021, however watching Bluey’s new particular episode, “The Signal,” it appears he’s discovered a solution. What that reply is, exactly, remains to be unclear. “The Signal,” whereas being a sometimes pretty, poignant episode of Bluey, solely works as a pivot for the sequence. If it’s is only a lark — an enormous, thrilling, quadruple-length wedding ceremony episode that however permits the present to proceed because it has been — its oddly unrealistic ending is disappointing to the purpose of frustration, a departure from Bluey’s ordinary ease in navigating advanced feelings. However as an ending, or as a solution to transition the sequence into a brand new section, “The Signal” is like a lot of Bluey: excellent and devastating.
Within the episode, the Heeler household has determined to maneuver away from their house in Brisbane, Australia, to a brand new unnamed metropolis the place dad Bandit acquired a better-paying job. Bluey is distraught. She seeks consolation from her trainer, Calypso, and tries to cease the home from being offered by eradicating the “For Sale” signal within the entrance yard. Because the Heelers put together to maneuver, they’re additionally preparing for the marriage of Bandit’s brother, Rad, to Frisky, a longtime pal of mother Chilli. A lot of “The Signal” is dedicated to Chilli searching for and soothe Frisky, who’s additionally been blindsided by the information that Rad desires the couple to maneuver away after the marriage, whereas coping with her personal reticence about leaving Brisbane. In the long run, Rad and Frisky announce at their wedding ceremony that they’ll keep native, and on the final second, because the Heeler household will get able to drive away from their beloved house, Bandit modifications his thoughts and decides that they, too, will keep the place they’re.
That is electrifying, ecstatic information for Bluey, Bingo, and Chilli. Additionally it is a weird alternative for a kids’s present that has, till this level, prioritized empathy and acceptance towards regular life occasions that trigger actual nervousness and turmoil for younger youngsters. Bluey has episodes about sharing, friendship, and the significance of nap time, but additionally episodes about dying, critical childhood sickness, untimely start, growing old grandparents, infertility, and the way to deal with extra minor childhood stressors like throwing away outdated art work, studying to sleep in your personal mattress, and never all the time successful. “The Signal” raises the idea of economic burden, one thing the present has hardly ever touched on previously, then permits Bandit and Chilli to decide out of selecting “a greater life” for Bluey and Bingo with out coping with the load or penalties of that call. It undermines its personal early message, as Calypso tells a bereft Bluey that typically endings are glad and unhappy on the identical time. Most unusually, it emphasizes a purely child-level type of want achievement with none actual consideration to the present’s attribute double imaginative and prescient, which blends parental perspective with a toddler’s standpoint. After greater than 150 episodes of Bluey and Bingo gently confronting many widespread and typically painful conditions, the tip of “The Signal” is a fairy story that additionally appears like a cop-out.
Besides, in a world the place “The Signal” is a grand closing gesture, this ending appears very totally different. If it marks an ending for the sequence, it makes excellent sense that Bluey would dramatize the nervousness of transferring on whereas additionally permitting the Heeler household to remain precisely the place they’re, safely of their house ceaselessly. “The Signal” can also be filled with callbacks and solutions to many beloved Bluey moments: It caps off an emotional thread with the ladies’ aunt Brandy; introduces its very first homosexual couple; and consists of references to Chattermax, “Let’s play Military!,” and Bluey’s floating inexperienced balloon.
After I spoke with Brumm in 2021, he was clear that he was bored with persevering with Bluey past the purpose when the sequence felt creatively satisfying. “I actually love this present, and I really like creating issues,” he mentioned. “The considered making one thing that was worse than the earlier season, or that my coronary heart’s not in — to spend a 12 months doing that and to work as exhausting as it’s a must to work to do the present — that’s a tough one for me.” If the way forward for the present weren’t working for him, Brumm instructed me, it is likely to be time for him to do one thing else. “Perhaps there’s a approach by it, and I’m certain there’s. However moderately than pushing ahead, it’s acquired to really feel proper creatively.”
“However there’ll be a greenback worth put to that,” Brumm added, and the possible form of that greenback worth has skyrocketed since our dialog. At present, Bluey is usually the most-viewed streaming sequence on the planet, and the amount of cash Disney have to be prepared to pay for extra is sort of unfathomable. So it could be that “The Signal” is as an alternative a significant transition, a solution to create a break from Bluey’s present establishment — with or with out a further feature-length movie, because the producers have hinted — which might enable it to return with new primary characters that would preserve the present with a preschool and early-elementary-age viewership. It may additionally take the type of a time bounce, or a shift to Muffin and Socks, or another new story in a Bluey world setting.
No matter form the way forward for Bluey may take, it’s unlikely “The Signal” would be the present’s ultimate phrase. Producer Sam Moor instructed the BBC that extra Bluey is coming after “The Signal,” and numerous fan platforms are speculating there’ll be not less than one extra season-three episode, which might deliver this season as much as the present’s typical 50-episode run depend. [Update: That episode, “Surprise!,” debuted on April 21.] What’s sure, with or with out “The Signal,” is that Bluey has been the definitive work of this era of youngsters’s tv. The truth that it has additionally grow to be a world blockbuster is a kind of uncommon however well-deserved situations when a very wonderful story has been accompanied by large financial success. We are able to solely hope that very same monumental success will enable Bluey to proceed, or finish, by itself phrases.
Extra ‘Bluey’
