Regular Show has officially returned to Cartoon Network with the premiere of a brand new revival series, and the first episode of Regular Show: The Lost Tapes explains how it picks up all these years after the original series. Regular Show wrapped up its original run with Cartoon Network nearly a decade ago with eight full seasons. The final episode then brought everything to an end with an explosive final battle, and even featured a time skip that revealed what Mordecai and Rigby’s lives looked like in the future after they quit working at the park.
Regular Show: The Lost Tapes creator J.G. Quintel has been playing coy about how the new revival would work after the original finale, and had been teasing fans that the answer would be revealed in the new series premiere. That’s actually the case as with the first episode, Regular Show‘s revival explains what it means by “The Lost Tapes.” These are indeed more adventures that had been “lost” within Pops’ memories that we’re all getting to see for the first time alongside of him.
Regular Show: The Lost Tapes begins with a special half hour premiere, and reintroduces fans to Pops, who is now having a happy existence in the Afterlife. The final episode of the original series saw Pops sacrifice himself in order to save everyone from his evil brother Anti-Pops, and the final scene of the finale teased that Pops had been watching “Regular Show” through a VCR tape. The revival further confirms this to be the case as Pops watches the “Regular Show” VHS tape every day. That is until he accidentally ruins it when he tries to rewind and fast forward it too.
It’s then explained that the “Regular Show” VHS is actually known as a “Memory Tape” in the Afterlife. It’s a tape filled with a person’s memories that they can revisit whenever they want, and Pops heads to a warehouse full of them in order to get his tape fixed. Instead, he stumbles on a collection of tapes that had been hidden deep within Pop’s section of the warehouse. When he finally pops one of these tapes in, the official title card for Regular Show: The Lost Tapes appears and begins the series in full.
The end of Pops’ segment in the premiere teases that he’s still being stalked by some kind of personification of the Memory Tapes, so it’s highly likely that Regular Show: The Lost Tapes will be returning to continue Pop’s current day timeline in the Afterlife. But through this format, it’s clear that fans won’t have to worry about the revival changing things too much about the perfect way that the original series came to an end.
The rest of the premiere, “Skip’s Luau” is just another fun story about Mordecai and Rigby working at the park and causing hovercraft shenanigans. It’s revealed that these are just going to be new adventures that fit perfectly within the original series’ timeline, and might even be jumping around in terms of what we get to see. Especially now that it’s been confirmed that Pops is showing a whole new look at his past life across 40 new episodes to come.
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