If you watched Season 2 of “Adults” in one weekend and spent the next two months waiting for news, FX finally has an answer for you. The network renewed the comedy Wednesday and doubled the next season to 16 episodes.
FX also gave creators Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw a new overall deal, so the network is keeping the people who made the show along with the show itself. It moved faster this time, too. Fans waited five months for the Season 2 renewal. This one came about 11 weeks after the Aug. 27 premiere.
FX had good reason to move fast, because Season 2 drew a bigger crowd than the first season from the start. In the first 12 days, Season 2 viewing ran more than 40% ahead of Season 1 across Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ around the world, according to FX. Viewing outside the U.S. doubled. By week five, FX put the jump at more than 60%.
New fans also went back to the beginning, with FX reporting that Season 1 streaming rose 50% after “Marathon Day,” the prequel episode that came out July 31.
Disney hasn’t shared raw viewer counts, so these numbers show the audience growing without telling you how many people watch.
Season 1 got a lukewarm welcome from critics, landing in the mid-70s on Rotten Tomatoes and at 65 on Metacritic, but Season 2 sits at a perfect 100%.
A lot of that growth makes sense once you look at who’s in the cast. Jack Innanen, who plays fan favorite Paul Baker, built a TikTok following of more than 3 million with his sketch comedy before he took the role. Co-star Owen Thiele also came up on TikTok.
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FX played to that strength when it released “Marathon Day,” Paul Baker’s 20-minute origin story. For a limited time, the full episode sat free on FX’s TikTok and Instagram and on Hulu’s YouTube channel, right where fans already scroll. Then Season 2 handed everyone an earworm with “Hiccups (Body Go Crazy),” an off-key pop song sung by a character who has no business being a pop star. Hollywood Records put it out for real.
FX Entertainment President Nick Grad pointed to that fan culture when he announced the order, saying the network had watched the show “inspire everything from memes to Halloween costumes.” Most renewal announcements talk about ratings and awards. This one counted costumes.
The 16-episode order is the bigger deal for anyone who grew up rewatching network sitcoms. Streaming spent the last decade cutting comedies down to eight or 10 episodes built for a weekend binge. The shows “Adults” keeps getting compared to ran 20-plus episodes a year, with room for the episodes where nothing big happens and the friends just hang out.
Fans have spent two seasons asking for those low-stakes episodes, and Kronengold has said the requests for “filler episodes” strike him as “so funny and kind of media-literate.” Shaw told TheWrap that “we’ll write as many episodes as we are given.”
FX Chairman John Landgraf is thinking well past Season 3, according to The Ankler, which reported that he hopes “Adults” can become the first streaming-era sitcom to reach 100 episodes.
