Music? Played. Lights? Lit. Muppets… Back?

By: Dylan Gibson '29

Photos courtesy of NPR

One would be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t know the Muppets. The lovable felt creatures have graced our screens since the 70s, singing songs, telling jokes, and being wonderful. I myself grew up with them; their 1979 film debut is a childhood favorite, their 2011 feature is one of my earliest movie theater memories, and I can still recount a good chunk of both soundtracks from memory, not to mention their “Christmas Carol” adaptation that remains a mandatory watch for me every winter. Heck, I've got a “Muppet Movie” poster in my dorm. But where have they been the last few years? They haven’t had a movie since 2014. Their last show came out in 2023 and was cancelled after one season. Disney World’s Muppet*Vision 3D and its accompanying Muppet-themed area are currently being torn down. For a moment, it seemed like the time of the Muppet was at an end.

Then, a five-foot-nothing light shone in the darkness.

Studio executives surely tore their hair out over a litany of Muppet-related questions. How do we use the Muppets in 2026? How must they change for a modern audience? Can’t we just make another crappy “Star Wars” show and call it a day? The answer, it turned out, was simple. Rather than pave a new road forward, the solution lay in looking back at the past.

On February 4, 2026, not only did The Muppets return, but “The Muppet Show” returned. Their very first television series was back for a half-hour special, played exactly like one of their old episodes. The familiar sketch-comedy structure, the familiar characters, the familiar stage, topped off with a celebrity guest star – pop icon Sabrina Carpenter, hot off the commercial and cultural success of her latest album “Man’s Best Friend.” Carpenter, with her tongue-firmly-in-cheek sense of humor and roughly Muppet-height, is a natural fit for the show. It is also worth noting her almost opposite path to her new felt collaborators. Where the Muppets seemed to slow down after their heyday, eventually being sold to Disney, Carpenter got her start as a child actress on Disney Channel, before coming into her own as a pop singer with a decidedly less “Disney” persona. As an executive producer as well as a guest star, Carpenter (alongside fellow guest star/executive producer Seth Rogen) played a role behind the scenes, a reflection of her passion for the project.

Short ‘n sweetness aside, is the special a success, and are the Muppets really “back?” Was the special even good? They certainly played on the emotional heartstrings harder than Animal on the drums. The opening images reveal the original stage, the drumset, the lights, all dark, but dustless, as if it has all been waiting for us all these years. Kermit himself, of course, “lights the lights” and walks past pictures of past guests while soft, nostalgic music chimes on, evolving into a piano rendition of “Rainbow Connection.” It’s all very sweet, before of course they poke fun at themselves by revealing Rowlf the Dog was behind the music, asking if Kermit (and we) thought it was “some kind of sentimental montage.” It is an interesting choice for the first Muppet interaction in the special to be Kermit and Rowlf– Jim Henson’s most well-known creation, and the one his close ones have described as most like himself. 

From there, the special springs to life in a gloriously Muppety chaotic spiral. “Movin’ Right Along,” another “Muppet Movie” original, plays on piano, Sabrina comes in, and so does Miss Piggy, soon followed by the classic theme song, faithfully recreated line for line, shot for shot. Statler and Waldorf are back with their delightfully mean heckling. There’s even a campy little laugh track! Really, it’s all back to formula in the best way possible. Viewing it as “just another episode” of the show, it’s not a particularly amazing standout, but a perfectly fine addition, and that’s enough. It’s the original feel without cheap nostalgia-bait. Again, Sabrina is perfect for the update as a popular guest and a representation of the new generation. Like she says to Miss Piggy, her own mother and her mother’s mother got to enjoy the Muppets, and now she– and the rest of our generation– get the same chance. 

The first segment is Sabrina with a spectacular rendition of “Manchild” backed by the chickens as singers. Afterwards there are music segments, funny segments, backstage bits, celebrity cameos from Seth Rogen and Maya Rudolph, and a pig-themed “Bridgerton” spoof, and it all works. Rizzo the Rat, who hasn’t had a speaking role since the firing of his former performer Steve Whitmire in 2016, returns with a fun “Blinding Lights” cover that ends just as it starts to wear out. 

Steve Whitmire is something of an elephant in the Muppet theatre in need of addressing. Not only Rizzo’s former actor, but Rizzo’s creator, and the man behind Kermit the Frog ever since Jim Henson’s death in 1990. Intensely devoted to Henson’s vision, and personally appointed as successor by Henson’s family, Whitmire was fired for undisclosed reasons, though statements and rumors circulated about him being hard to work with or too unwilling to compromise. Either way, he was replaced by Matt Vogel, whose Kermit voice has been subject to mild controversy. To be honest, I wasn’t initially sold on it either. It sounded just a little “off” from the Kermit I’d grown up with. This was my biggest hang-up going into the special. But, the new voice became familiar much faster than I thought it might. By his heartwarming, borderline tear-jerking duet of “Islands in the Stream” with Sabrina in the special (one of many echoes of Dolly Parton’s influence in her career, but I digress), I was all in. Whitmire will always be the Kermit I grew up watching from “A Muppet Christmas Carol” to “Muppets Most Wanted”, but Vogel proved himself in my eyes.

Vogel may be worthy, but is the special? I think so. It was lovely from start to finish. We got new spins on classic bits and a joke or two just for the grown-ups (i.e. Sabrina “loves a kink”). Then there’s the question of whether this means “The Muppet Show” is “back.” Kermit implied that it “may be starting again depending on how [the special] goes.” Variety claims sources said the special would serve as a backdoor pilot for the show’s return. Some theorize that if it were meant to be a one-off, the special would’ve been longer than a half-hour. If it’s to be believed, Disney may have no choice but to continue. Positive reviews have flooded in, with a 98% Rotten Tomatoes score (and this writer would like to personally have a word with the other 2%), and Variety says the special pulled 7.58 million viewers. It’s unlikely this is the last we’ll see of “The Muppet Show,” and more cannot come soon enough. With any luck, more episodes will be “Movin’ Right Along” before we know it.