SpongeBob has been renewed, will never die

There are few things you can truly rely on in this life. Institutions fall. Buildings crumble. Love erodes. But SpongeBob? SpongeBob is forever.

This is per Variety, which reports that Nickelodeon has just issued a 15th-season renewal to venerable sponge-based animated series SpongeBob SquarePants, a 26-episode order that will bring the series well past the point where it enters its 25th year when we reach May of next year. (Someone should tell SpongeBob he’s about to get kicked off of his parents’ health insurance, although as a homeowner with one snail dependent, he can presumably foot the bill himself at this point.) The new order brings the series, which has kept series star Tom Kenny in paychecks and Emmys for nearly half his life at this point, up to 345 episodes of absurdist, silly, still surprisingly funny kids TV.

For those of you who’ve managed to lose track, SpongeBob as a franchise is absolutely massive at this point, encompassing two spin-off series (Kamp Koral and The Patrick Star Show), three films (in 2004, 2015, and 2020), a stage musical, several video games, theme park rides, a popsicle, a trading card game, and that one song where rapper Cupcakke talked about wanting to have sex with Squidward’s nose. (We’re pretty sure that last one was unofficial, but Nickelodeon licenses a lot of SpongeBob crap, so who can say?) It’s one of the flagship franchises for the whole network, having, by this point, outlasted its own creator, Stephen Hillenburg, who died in 2018, and become a pop culture juggernaut unto its own.

Despite the season 15 renewal, the series is still currently only in its 13th season—although this is one of those Game Of Thrones seasons that stretches for like 3 years, having started back in October of 2020. The show last released new episodes in August of this year, and will continue to do so until you, we, and presumably the rest of the human race are dust.