Hulu killed the Buffy revival. Now it's bringing back Glee
Seven months separate the two decisions, and only one of them came with a star attached.
Disney+ and Hulu gave a series order to a Glee revival on October 21, 2026. Ryan Murphy wrote the script with the original co-creators Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, there's no premiere date, and not a single actor has been announced — new or returning.
The same company made the opposite call in March. Hulu's Buffy the Vampire Slayer revival — with Chloé Zhao directing and Sarah Michelle Gellar herself reprising the lead — was declared dead after a pilot had already been shot. Gellar signed off with a line fans are still quoting: "If the apocalypse actually comes, you can still beep me."
So the scoreboard at Disney streaming reads: a revival with its original star on camera, cancelled; a revival with zero named cast, greenlit. Fans noticed the asymmetry immediately, and in r/television they weren't polite about it:
"F—k them for cancelling the Buffy revival but green lighting all of this bullshit!!!"
— r/television commenter (7 upvotes)
Who's coming back
Murphy has been seeding this since July, when he told People at The Shards premiere that Glee "has come back around. So many young people watch it." By the American Horror Story season 13 premiere, he told Entertainment Tonight the script was finished.
On returning faces, the only on-record detail is Murphy's: he has been in touch with around 10 original cast members, who "had a lot of questions" but were "very enthusiastic about the idea." Nobody — Lea Michele included — is confirmed, and three of the original ensemble can't return: Cory Monteith died in 2013, Mark Salling in 2018, Naya Rivera in 2020.
The original ran six seasons on Fox from 2009 to 2015, won six Emmys, and has stayed stubbornly alive on streaming ever since. That streaming afterlife is the business case Murphy keeps citing.
The hate-watch math
The top-voted reaction in r/glee itself is not excitement, exactly:
"Man this is going to be so bad. but also I unfortunately will have to check it out lmao"
— r/glee commenter (315 upvotes)
That comment is the whole pitch, whether fans like it or not. A Buffy revival had to clear a quality bar to justify touching a sacred text; a Glee revival only has to get people to press play, and 315 people just upvoted a promise to do exactly that.
Hulu walked away from Buffy with Sarah Michelle Gellar already cast. Glee got its order with nobody cast at all.
What's actually in the new show — setting, characters, episode count — Disney hasn't said. The original cast answers will tell you most of what this revival intends to be: a reunion, or a new New Directions with the old logo.
Previously we wrote: Why is Val suspended from DWTS: one deleted TikTok made him the first pro ever benched in the show's history