I memory-holed the fact that CW was making an adult-oriented, live-action Powerpuff Girls show after the series was canceled before it was even released back in 2023. I, like plenty of other millennials growing up in the ‘90s, have a lot of good memories of watching the Cartoon Network show following three superpowered sisters, and not only did I think CW’s pitch of a more “mature” version of these characters going through adult problems sounded like the basis of a YouTube parody, but I’d also wasted enough hours of my life watching CW’s DC Comics universe shows to know that this company’s version of melodramatic campy riffs on legacy characters only works half the time. Today, March 6, a trailer for the scrapped show has been published online, and Powerpuff Girls fans are both glad the show never saw the light of day and morbidly curious about what it could have been.
The trailer was posted by Lost Media Busters, a YouTube channel that posts videos from canceled, deleted, or otherwise not publicly available shows, movies, and video games. The one good thing I will say about it before we start dragging the three-and-a-half minute clip is that it sounds like CW got Tom Kenny (who most know as the voice of SpongeBob) to reprise his role as the narrator for the trailer. Either that or they got a really convincing soundalike. And that does it for the positive because, holy shit, this looks terrible.
It looks like Powerpuff (there’s no Girls in the title because they’re grown women now, of course), would have started the same way the original cartoon did, with Scrubs actor Donald Faison playing Professor Utonium as he accidentally created three superpowered girls who fought crime and were generally considered heroes to the city of Townsville. Their heroism led to a wave of popularity, including merch lines and even a cartoon riff on their exploits (the original show which, in a bit of meta-humor, live-action Buttercup says “completely whitewashed” the trio), and things were going well for the girls. That is, until something happens that turns the public against them. We see protests against the girls, and eventually the three of them do something that gets Townsville mayor Mojo killed, paving the way for his son Jojo to take over. (The pair’s names are clearly an homage to Mojo Jojo, a monkey with human intelligence who was one of the cartoon’s main villains.)
After this, the girls go their separate ways, and this is where the show goes from what looks like an okay YouTube parody video to a bad Saturday Night Live sketch about the girls crashing out in their young adult years. Blossom runs away, Buttercup becomes a firefighter, and Bubbles becomes a burnout who drinks her nights away and tries to cash in on her lost fame. Eventually, the girls regroup in Townsville and Jojo hatches an evil scheme they must band together to stop.
But, my god, this whole thing is a hard watch. The three minutes of curated footage amounts to a series of unfunny jokes, awkward and stilted action, some of the worst green-screened flying you’ve ever seen, and a signature CW needle drop of the most popular song on the radio at the time, Dua Lipa’s “Levitating.” It oozes focus-tested flavorlessness with a slight pinch of edgy toilet humor so people know this time the Powerpuff Girls are Not For Kids. If you’ve got the stomach for it, check out the full trailer below.
CW’s campy shlock can sometimes work. Riverdale managed to take its self-seriousness and morph it into something enjoyable over several seasons. The company’s decade of DC Comics extended universe shows produced some real garbage, but Legends of Tomorrow was pretty exceptional before it was unceremoniously canceled in its seventh season. But I see no such spark here. Fans of the original show are mostly celebrating that the show was canceled before it had a chance to sully the Powerpuff name, though some admit they probably would have hate-watched it and others think the adaptation could have had potential.
Well, I’ll leave you with the one laugh I’ve had through looking at this all day. The top YouTube comment on the trailer right now comes from @SarilingMundo, who posted a slightly altered version of the original show’s episodic sign-off: “And once again the day is saved, thanks to whoever decided to cancel this.”
